On March 6, 2012, six British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan by a roadside explosive device, and a national ritual of mourning and rage ensued. Prime Minister David Cameron called it a “desperately sad day for our country.” A British teenager, Azhar Ahmed, observed the reaction for two days and then went to Facebook to angrily object that the innocent Afghans killed by British soldiers receive almost no attention from British media. He opined that the UK’s soldiers in Afghanistan are guilty, their deaths deserved, and are therefore going to hell:

The following day, Ahmed was arrested and “charged with a racially aggravated public order offense.” The police spokesman explained that “he didn’t make his point very well and that is why he has landed himself in bother.” The state proceeded to prosecute him, and in October of that year, he was convicted “of sending a grossly offensive communication,” fined and sentenced to 240 hours of community service.

As demonstrators demanded he be imprisoned, the judge who sentenced Ahmed pronounced his opinions “beyond the pale of what’s tolerable in our society,” ruling: “I’m satisfied that the message was grossly offensive.” The Independent‘s Jerome Taylor noted that he “escaped jail partially because he quickly took down his unpleasant posting and tried to apologize to those he offended.” Apparently, heretics may be partially redeemed if they publicly renounce their heresies.

Criminal cases for online political speech are now commonplace in the UK, notorious for its hostility to basic free speech and press rights. As The Independent‘s James Bloodworth reported last week, “around 20,000 people in Britain have been investigated in the past three years for comments made online.”

But the persecution is by no means viewpoint-neutral. It instead is overwhelmingly directed at the country’s Muslims for expressing political opinions critical of the state’s actions.

To put it mildly, not all online “hate speech” or advocacy of violence is treated equally. It is, for instance, extremely difficult to imagine that Facebook users who sanction violence by the UK in Iraq and Afghanistan, or who spew anti-Muslim animus, or who call for and celebrate the deaths of Gazans, would be similarly prosecuted. In both the UK and Europe generally, cases are occasionally brought for right-wing “hate speech” (the above warning from Scotland’s police was issued after a polemicist posted repellent jokes on Twitter about Ebola patients). But the proposed punishments for such advocacy are rarely more than symbolic: trivial fines and the like. The real punishment is meted out overwhelmingly against Muslim dissidents and critics of the West.

In sum, this is not merely an attack on free speech but on specific ideas. Writing about Ahmed’s case in The Guardian, Richard Seymour described him as “the latest victim of a concerted effort to redefine racism as ‘anything that could conceivably offend white people.'”

The authoritarian impulses that drove Ahmed’s prosecution are increasingly asserting themselves. In November, a 22-year-old Iraqi-British woman, Alaa Abdullah Esayed, was arrested and charged with using Twitter to promote terrorism. In the words of the police, she stands “accused of providing a service that enabled others ‘to obtain, read, listen to or look at a terrorist publication, by providing links to speeches and other propaganda.'” When she appeared in court last month, the prosecutor emphasized that she is “accused of uploading 45,600 tweets in just under a year encouraging children to use weapons and embrace extremism.” Among her transgressions is “post[ing] pictures of corpses felled in battle and poems entitled ‘Mother of the Martyr.'” She faces years in prison, and the judge barred her from using Twitter pending her trial.

Last month in the UK, a 35-year-old mother of six, Runa Khan, was sentenced to five years in prison for “promoting terrorism on Facebook.” The judge, Peter Birts QC (pictured, right), “heard police had found photos of Khan’s children holding guns and swords” and “said the ‘only fair interpretation’ of those pictures was that Khan had intended to radicalize others.” The prosecution overwhelmingly focused on her political views, including the fact that she “took pictures of her toddler son holding a toy gun and encouraged parents of children as young as two to put them on the path to jihad.” She “appeared to glorify the murder of [British soldier] Lee Rigby” by “shar[ing] a post by another user which complained about Muslims who condemned the killing.” In imposing Khan’s sentence, Judge Brits pronounced her an “avowed fundamentalist Islamist holding radical and extreme beliefs.”

Khan will now spend the next five years in prison because a very white, very British, very establishment-loyal jurist harbors contempt for her political views, her religious values, and particularly her attempts to teach them to her children. This is part of what he told her when removing her from her children and consigning her to a cage until February, 2020:

You hold to an ideology which espouses jihad as an essential part of the Islamist obligation. . . . I sentence you not for your beliefs, abhorrent though they are to all civilized people, but for your actions in disseminating terrorist material with the clear intention of radicalizing others. . . . Your purpose was to encourage and promote your particular brand of violent fundamentalism. . . . You were deeply committed to radicalizing others, including very young children, into violent jihadist extremism. . . . You appear to have no insight into the effect of radicalizing your children, having selfishly placed your own ideology and beliefs above their welfare in your priorities.

In other words: you’re allowed, by our generosity, to mentally harbor your vile opinions. But if you try to publicly advocate them on Facebook, convince others to believe them, or teach them to your children, then you are a dangerous criminal who belongs in prison.

Needless to say, this judge would never lecture, let alone sentence, anyone for “holding to an ideology” that advocates violence by the British government in Muslim countries, nor parents who indoctrinate their children to join the British military, nor those who led that country to invade and destroy Iraq in an aggressive war. To understand the point, one need not equate these views or view some as better than others. The point is that this is the state punishing expression of some viewpoints while sanctioning others. This is about criminalizing specific views anathema to the government’s policies, outlawing particular value systems.

This eagerness to criminalize political speech becomes more compelling as social media vests ordinary individuals with greater autonomy to disseminate news as well as their views. No longer dependent on corporate media institutions acting as Responsible Gatekeepers of Tolerable Opinions, individuals all over the world are now able to curate their own news and create their own powerful opinion platforms.

The democratizing effects on political discourse have long been heralded as a future potential of the internet, but it is now a promise finally being fulfilled, and it is scaring entrenched political and media institutions all over the world. Many westerners received news about daily developments in the “Arab Spring” from previously unknown Arab citizens using Twitter and Facebook rather than from large establishment media outlets. That significantly increased sympathy for the protesters, now more humanized than ever before, at the expense of the U.S.-supported tyrannies (long protected by the west’s media outlets) which they were attempting to uproot.

Perhaps the most potent example yet was the most recent Israeli attack on Gaza, where, for the first time, the full brutality and savagery of Israeli aggression was publicly conveyed. That’s because, despite their poverty, many ordinary Gazans now have video cameras on their cellphones and a Twitter account, which meant they were regularly uploading horrific video of Israeli bombs and tanks destroying hospitals, schools and apartment buildings, which in turn prevented Western journalists from ignoring or diluting the civilian carnage.

Transferring information control from large media outlets to individual Gazans radically altered how that attack was covered and, thereafter, how Israel was perceived around the world. That is a genuinely fundamental change.

Like all technologies that threaten to subvert prevailing authority, social media–along with the Internet generally–is being increasingly targeted with police measures of control, repression and punishment. Just like mass surveillance does to the Internet, this is all part of an effort to convert these new technologies from a potential tool of subversion into one that further bolsters governing power factions.

It is thus unsurprising that the national police of Scotland posted the above-displayed warning last week. That warning tweet is starker and more honest than the tone typically used to convey such messages, but it perfectly captures the mindset of states throughout the west about the “dangers” of social media and the repressive steps they are now taking to combat them. As Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation documented this week, legal suppression of online speech is spreading throughout the west and democracies worldwide.

Despite frequent national boasting of free speech protections, the U.S. has joined, and sometimes led, the trend to monitor and criminalize online political speech. The DOJ in 2011 prosecuted a 24-year-old Pakistani resident of the United States, Jubair Ahmad, on terrorism charges for uploading a 5-minute video to YouTube featuring photographs of Abu Ghraib abuses, video of American armored trucks exploding, and prayer messages about “jihad” from the leader of a designated terror group; he was convicted and sent to prison for 12 years. The same year, the DOJ indicted a 22-year-old Penn State student for, among other things, posting justifications of attacks on the U.S. to a “jihadi forum”; the speech offender, Emerson Winfield Begolly, was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison.

Countless post-9/11 prosecutions for “material support of terrorism” are centrally based on political views expressed by the (almost always young and Muslim) defendants, who are often “anticipatorily prosecuted” for expression of ideas political officials find threatening. There is no doubt that the U.S. government has even used political speech as a significant factor in placing individuals on its “kill list” and then ending their life, including the U.S.-born preacher Anwar Awlaki (targeted with death before the attempted Christmas Day bombing over Detroit which was later used to justify Awlaki’s killing). Anti-American views by Muslims–meaning opposition to U.S. aggression and violence–are officially viewed as evidence of terrorist propensity, which is why this passage, flagged by the ACLU-Massachusetts’ Kade Crockford, appeared in a CNN article yesterday about the trial of Boston Marathon bombing defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev:

As is true for all War on Terror abuses, this American version of criminalizing speech is spreading far beyond its original application, and is increasingly applied domestically. Anti-police messages are now being subjected to the same criminalizing treatment as anti-military and anti-U.S.-foreign-policy ideas.

Last month in western Massachusetts, police issued a criminal summons to 27-year-old Charles DiRosa for posting an “anti-police Facebook post.” His “crime” was the posting of a very simple message on his Facebook account, which simply quoted the phrase posted on Facebook by Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley on the day he killed two NYPD officers.

DiRosa’s Facebook post led local police to investigate and confirm his identity. The police then announced on their own Facebook page that DiRosa was the author of the offending post and was being summoned on criminal charges. For good measure, they also posted two of his pictures:

There’s no question that DiRosa’s “anti-police” post is pure free speech, constitutionally protected. Even if one wants to construe it as a recommendation to others that they kill police officers, the First Amendment bars any prosecution. As the Supreme Court ruled 45 years ago in Brandenburg v. Ohio, “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force” (emphasis added). Writing in TheWashington Post,Law Professor Eugene Volokh makes the same point. Brandenburg overturned the conviction of a KKK member for publicly threatening political officials with violence, and invalidated an Ohio law that made it a crime to “advocate . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform.”

It’s unsurprising that in a country borne of violent revolution against its monarch, the Constitution expressly guarantees the right to this advocacy, even if it includes justifications for violence. You’re allowed to argue that the state has become so corrupt and dangerous that violent revolution is merited. You’re allowed to argue that, in light of police abuse, killing police officers is a legitimate form of self-defense or is otherwise just. You’re allowed to argue that decades of U.S. violence against innocent Muslims ethically justifies, or even obligates, Muslims to bring violence back to the U.S. as the only means of stopping that aggression.

Under the most basic free speech principles, nobody can be prosecuted for expressing those views. These principles reflect a vital recognition: empowering officials to criminalize the expression of those views is far more dangerous than the views themselves.

But even if you’re someone inclined to cheer when endorsement of violence is outlawed, there’s no denying that application of this suppression is completely selective. As Andrew Meyer adeptly documented this week, a former Connecticut police officer, Doug Humphrey, used his Facebook account to issue a much more direct and disturbing threat against DiRosa, yet the ex-officer has not been charged with anything:

Meyer notes that – in the wake of increasing controversy over racist and abusive police misconduct – “police departments throughout the United States are arresting people for making alleged threats against officers online with little, if any, investigation,” and lists numerous prosecutions as dubious as the DiRosa case, if not more so. DiRosa himself was formally summoned within hours of posting his Facebook message. Yet here is a case of a former police officer urging his fellow officers to kill a specific person, with the person’s picture posted, and there have been no charges filed. As Meyer argues, “compared to the others who were either arrested or threatened with arrest, [the ex-officer’s] comment was the one that came closest to a threat, so not taking action will further prove that cops are above the law.”

Like the law generally, criminalizing online speech is reserved only for certain kinds of people (those with the least power) and certain kinds of views (the most marginalized and oppositional). Those who serve the most powerful factions or who endorse their orthodoxies are generally exempt. For that reason, these trends in criminalizing online speech are not so much an abstract attack on free speech generally, but worse, are an attempt to suppress particular ideas and particular kinds of people from engaging in effective persuasion and political activism.

Contact the author:

Great article – thought provoking and insightful. Having this conversation, with any degree of depth and producing results which continue to enlighten Society, difficult at best. Fortunately, it is happening, in spite of ‘headline news sound bites’ drowning the minds of many.

what about misunderstanding sarcasm, or a joke? what about a typo or predictive text errors? what about somebody hacking into your computer and posting under your name? someone tricking you into typing something? aren’t they basically stealing the entire internet technology now?

“In other words: you’re allowed, by our generosity, to mentally harbor your vile opinions. But if you try to publicly advocate them on Facebook, convince others to believe them, or teach them to your children, then you are a dangerous criminal who belongs in prison.”

Obviously Mr Greenwald does not believe it should be illegal to incite minors to commit crimes. I wonder Mr Greenwald, when should the judiciary intervene? When the Nazis or ISIL finally give the weapons to the teenagers and sent them to the battlefield or when these organizations are just convincing them to use violence against others?

“There is no doubt that the U.S. government has even used political speech as a significant factor in placing individuals on its “kill list” and then ending their life, including the U.S.-born preacher Anwar Awlaki (targeted with death before the attempted Christmas Day bombing over Detroit which was later used to justify Awlaki’s killing”

Really Mr Greenwald? “No doubt”? And your example is Anwar Awlaki
1) Arrested in 2006 in Yemen for participating in an Al Qaeda plot against US military personnel
2) Openly provided lodging and financial support to Al Qaeda members according to Yemeni judicial authorities
3) subject to an arrest warrant in 2010 from Yemeni judicial authorities for being a member of Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization under Yemeni law/ UN resolutions and for plotting to kill foreigners.

So, Mr Greenwald you have “no doubt” that the US government placed Awlaki on a kill list mainly because of his political speech? Even if he was involved in recruiting for and helping a terrorist organization, was arrested for being a member for this terrorist organization?

I was totally on board with this article all up until I got to this:
“The DOJ in 2011 prosecuted a 24-year-old Pakistani resident of the United States, Jubair Ahmad, on terrorism charges for uploading a 5-minute video to YouTube featuring photographs of Abu Ghraib abuses, video of American armored trucks exploding, and prayer messages about “jihad” from the leader of a designated terror group; he was convicted and sent to prison for 12 years”

You’re better than this, shame on you. Even a cursory review of the facts on this case would reveal that there was substantially more to Ahmad’s arrest & conviction.

By selectively reporting facts you undermine the entire legitimacy of your article and its potential to influence and inform. There is certainly no lack of REAL cases in the US to surpress social media free speech through intimidation and prosecution.

This article is at its worst; propaganda, and at its best: Lazy reporting.

We live in a free and liberal society where the proper response to another incident of violence committed by Islamic radicals is to blame Muslims and Arabs for hating our freedoms and bomb individuals hundreds of miles away in retaliation.

We live in a free and liberal society where the proper response to another incident of violence committed by domestic radicals is to blame politically moderate elected officials for being honest about institutionalized racism and gun violence.

We live in a free and liberal society where the proper response to a few dozen Islamic fundamentalists killing 3,000 people in one morning is a decades-long war against largely unaffiliated Islamic governments and people that kills hundreds of thousands and injures and displaces millions of Arabic and Islamic people.
We live in a free and liberal society where the proper response to thousands of state agents extrajudicially killing a minimum of 3,000 unarmed American people of color per decade while unjustly incarcerating millions more through a systematic war of oppression explicitly designed to disenfranchise and disempower minorities and political undesirables, is nothing. Nothing except for beating and arresting those who dare speak in favor of retaliation or serious reformation.

We live in a free and liberal society primed for mass domestic race riots and domestic terrorism and we are doing nothing to address this besides suppressing dissent and hey, look over there! More crazy Muslims shot people! Bomb ISIS! More drone strikes! Expand the War on Terror!

We live in a free and liberal society that, as part of a larger campaign of bombings and assassinations in the 1960s and 1970s, trained and financed Orlando Bosch and others to bomb a Cuban civilian airliner and kill dozens of civilians. We live in a free and liberal society that in 1992 pardoned Bosch, helped resettle him in Miami, and prevented his associate from being extradited for trial because Venezuela could not provide a satisfactory guarantee that he would not be tortured.

We live in a free and liberal society that routinely “renders” suspects to dictatorships far worse than Venezuela for torture at the hands of foreign agents. We live in a free and liberal society that within ten years of Bosch’s unconditional pardon embarked on a global war against terrorism wherein we engaged in wars of aggression on false pretenses and killed hundreds of thousands of non-combatants. We live in a free and liberal society that bombs media outlets and kills unsympathetic journalists in Iraq and Palestine and Cuba and Nicaragua and Philadelphia and Birmingham and elsewhere in the name of nationalism, tradition, stability and realpolitik efficiency.

We live in a free and liberal society that disappears thousands of prisoners of war and political prisoners into a worldwide network of secret gulags where they are tortured and worse. We live in a free and liberal society where none of the leaders who order or encourage this torture will ever be prosecuted. We live in a free and liberal society where the bureaucrats responsible for the torture won’t even be punished for surveilling and intimidating the elected officials tasked with overseeing said bureaucrats.

We live in a free and liberal society that has, in the last month, arrested, jailed, and charged with making terroristic threats at minimum dozens of young men who have, in effect, done nothing other than post hip hop lyrics and paraphrased Malcom X quotes on Facebook. That is, engaged in public speech using language which has, since at least Brandenberg v. Ohio, been explicitly protected by the First Amendment.

While even leftist American political commentators engage in a pointless pants-pissing match over whether we should assess Islamic fundamentalists murdering journalists as more or less important than Adam Lanza murdering schoolchildren because he is a raving lunatic or Anders Breivik murdering schoolchildren because he is a raving fanatic, the United States of America is busy turning popular and formerly protected political sentiment into terroristic thoughtcrime.

We are to fear the supposedly chilling effect that these latest attacks will have on journalistic and editorial critiques of radical Islam. We are to ignore, as our media and NGOs largely are, that the Department of Justice is assisting local police and prosecutors in portraying vague violent sentiments and online political speech as illegal threats. Formerly protected speech against the state and state agents is being redefined as terrorism if state agents report that said speech made them anxious or uncomfortable. That is truly horrifying and represents a far more chilling threat to speech and the stated values of our Constitutional Republic than does a thousand stateless religious radicals bombing television stations and press offices.

The war raging isn’t one of Western Secular Freedom v Islamic Theocratic Tyranny, but rather one of the Neoliberal Globalization and Technocratic Totalitarianism of the Elite v. Everyone Else. I can understand how spending decades immersed in attitudes of American Exceptionalism, arguments for Western Colonization, and agitation against the external ‘others’ can make people not see the the forest for the brilliantly lit trees of faux “liberty” and “freedom.” But I urge us all to start squinting and try to look past the glare.

i really dont mind this freedom of speech bulshit,
because might is right .
if your word is enough for u to go to jail for several years then when the table turn it will be also ok to prosecute the people of other faith .

Great article, I just started to read comments and saw that spies are commenting, always supporting government, I call them money money patriots, they love gov because they work for gov and profit from gov. they don’t care for society they will always support gov.

War is business and the both sides in war commit terrorist acts, media propaganda and prosecution by judicial system is just part of that dirty war business, I am happy to see that somebody writes about it. it is shame how much people are under control because medias are possessed by rich people and consequently people don’t protest against war and terrorist acts from the both sides. so, yes, newest terrorist attack in Paris is just result of French colonial politics, French terrorism, such terrorism existed in the past, it was done by other people who were not Muslims. French institutions were attacked many times even by anarchists. France and Britain are well known colonial powers, it means they made mass murders, in 1961, France killed 20 000 people in Algeria in one weekend. Noam Chomsky has book On Western Terrorism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPRvssOZiKA

Gleen Greenwald and his brand of confused “journalists” have greater loyalty to race, complexion and identity politics than to the principles that founded Western societies. In fact it appears that he has no idea what those principles are. Of you really believe that “police” in Western societies are your greatest enemy, you have no idea where you live in this world.

” Gleen Greenwald and his brand of confused “journalists” have greater loyalty to race, complexion and identity politics than to the principles that founded Western societies. In fact it appears that he has no idea what those principles are. Of you really believe that “police” in Western societies are your greatest enemy, you have no idea where you live in this world ”

It is quite revealing that all you could make out of this article, is Glenn’s ‘ greater loyalty’ to what you obviously see as the glare of ” race, complexion and identity politics “, which are to you, stand-alone features with neither relevance nor direct and essential connection to the gist of the story. And then you go on to say the ultimate : that he has no comprehension of the principles that founded western societies…

For you to fail to recognize that political pluralism is at the very heart of western liberal democratic societies is to have superlatively succeeded at stating your fatally flawed understanding of the principles of western societal foundations to begin with.

Pluralism entails inclusion and dispersion of power among all in a democratic society instead of one race, religion etc presiding and dominating over others. What your understanding of political pluralism is, which is obviously different from this, is something that neither interests me nor is it anything that I particularly care to know.

Then you wrote: ” Of you really believe that “police” in Western societies are your greatest enemy, you have no idea where you live in this world.”

There can be a very thin line sometimes between what is actually believed and what one person – yourself in this case – imagines to be believed. No one, not even the protesters of police brutality let alone Greenwald, believe that police in society are their greatest enemy.

“…….Anti-American views by Muslims–meaning opposition to U.S. aggression and violence–are officially viewed as evidence of terrorist propensity, which is why this passage, flagged by the ACLU-Massachusetts’ Kade Crockford, appeared in a CNN article yesterday about the trial of Boston Marathon bombing defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev…..”

and

“……A British teenager, Azhar Ahmed, observed the reaction for two days and then went to Facebook to angrily object that the innocent Afghans killed by British soldiers receive almost no attention from British media. He opined that the UK’s soldiers in Afghanistan are guilty, their deaths deserved, and are therefore going to hell……”

The timing of your article was impeccable as radical Islamists attacked a beacon of free speech in Paris today murdering twelve people while you spout nonsense about racism directed at Muslims. The attack had nothing to do with western violence directed at Muslims. The Islamists responsible are anti globalization, anti democratic and especially anti free speech. Yes, they hate our freedoms, Mr. Greenwald. Islamic terrorists are more than willing to murder as many Muslims as possible to gain power and subjugate Muslims. Attacks like 911, 7/7, the Madrid bombings have nothing to do with western violence directed at Muslims, but are a part of a political strategy. The attack against the French newspaper was simply about denying offensive speech – and attacks like this are the primary reason that Muslims are profiled. It is a simple enough correlation.

With hundreds or thousands of Western Muslims have joined the fight in Syria and Iraq, the radicalization process proceeds in western countries. According to business Insider, a majority join the ISIS – a group of racist, murderous, anti democracy terrorists. Indeed, Awlaki called for the death of a Seattle cartoonist who had to change her name because she offended the profit, Muhammed:

“……In 2010, cartoonist Molly Norris at Seattle Weekly had to stop publishing, and at the suggestion of the FBI change her name, move, and go into hiding due to a Fatw? calling for her death issued by al-Awlaki, after Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.[192][193][194] Al-Awlaki cursed her and eight other cartoonists, authors, and journalists who are Swedish, Dutch, and British citizens for “blasphemous caricatures” of the Prophet Muhammad, in the June 2010 issue of an English-language al-Qaeda magazine that calls itself Inspire, writing “The medicine prescribed by the Messenger of Allah is the execution of those involved”….”

This was an extremely serious threat. Thankfully, Awlaki was assassinated by a drone as his name was tied to numerous terrorist attacks – using free speech which he abhors. Muslims continue to lead the world in terrorist attacks. Most of the victims are Muslims.

Doc Hollywood, I’m really looking forward to the day when you share your insights on an Intercept article, instead belaboring your unhealthy obsession with mocking CraigSummers. I can tell you’re a smart guy, and not just an asshole bully. I know you’re better than the way you’ve acting, and hope you’ll show us all, sometime.

Doc, I am not *holier* than anyone, believe me. I’m sorry you felt that was what I was saying. I just don’t see what constructive purpose mocking anyone serves, except entertaining some of the meaner participants in these threads. I think mocking people only leads to anger, not learning and certainly not productive dialog.

I know what a smart guy you are, and I wish you would use your smarts to make insightful points and guide debate, with people you agree and disagree with, instead of using your intellect to craft insults. Really, I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

I pretty much disagree with Craig on most issues, but I am capable of talking to him and not having it devolve into personal attacks. And one thing I do appreciate about Craig, is that at least he’s almost always polite. I have not noticed Craig spewing hatred and bigotry per se, and I think that Craig, like most of us, is still just a human being in process. :-)

note: to the \\ intercept employees responsible for revising/rectifying this abomination of a comment’s section, please provide individual archives for said commentary as a means to have the functionality to reference said racist utterances when validating one’s point.

“…….note: to the \\ intercept employees responsible for revising/rectifying this abomination of a comment’s section, please provide individual archives for said commentary as a means to have the functionality to reference said racist utterances when validating one’s point……”

There are at least three years of comments available at the Guardian. Go to it!!

With all due resentfulness, how do your archives at the Guardian have any bearing on the disparaging remark(s) that you’ve contributed here in these disheveled halls of the // intercept? Does one need to have a pattern of inept utterances to qualify one’s despicable labelings? I don’t know what is worse, the fact that you referred to these individuals as “brownies”, or your lack of humility for not apologizing for having the audacity to convey them in the first place..

“…….In his article, Ben-Atar claims to possess professional competence on the issue of anti-Semitism. It is true that he has published on the subject. But the suggestion that any criticism of Israel can only be anti-Semitic casts some doubt on his scholarly acumen……”

I skimmed the article, but I don’t think he was accusing anyone of antisemitism for criticizing Israel, but for not protesting the call for a boycott by the American Studies Association. He may well have been right about the organizers of the boycott, but not fellow teachers which seems to go a bit too far in my opinion. Think of all of the countries where people are oppressed (like Egypt, China and so on) so why boycott Israel? The answer is because the issue is political. I have posted recently that in time (decade?) a boycott will be organized against Israel because they continue to lose the international propaganda sweepstakes from the wars in Gaza and their expansion of their settlements.

Muslims continue to lead the world in terrorist attacks. Most of the victims are Muslims.

Did you see what happened when Israel invaded Gaza?

When Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people nobody said, “It’s the radical rightwing. We must throw out the Constitution to stop them.”

When Timothy McVeigh blew up a government building “It’s the radical anti-government conservatives. We must throw out the Constitution to stop them.”

When the US invaded Iraq and killed countless (and uncounted people). “It’s the radical neocons. We must throw out the Constitution to stop them.”

When James Eagan Holmes killed 12 people in a movie theater, no one said, “It’s the radical Batman haters. We must throw out the Constitution to stop them.”

People who blame all Muslims, or some “radical” Muslims, or even the Islamic religion for the acts of specific people, then it becomes obvious (to me) they have an agenda.

If you want to blame this or that religion or this or that ethic group, you mark yourself as a racist. You’re no less dangerous than those who kill because they feel their sacred beliefs violated. Yet no one says, “It’s the radical racists. We must throw out the Constitution to stop them.”

The degree to which you allow US authorities to terrorize people anywhere (from Baghdad to Ferguson), is exactly the degree of terrorism condone. Saying Muslims “continue to lead the world in terrorists attacks” allows you to ignore drone attacks, torture, shock and awe, detentions without trial, military invasions by the US military and threats of war like those directed towards Iran, Ignore these terroristic practices, ignore the bodies, ignore the stated policies of the US, but you cannot ignore your own participation as a cheering spectator.

Calling murder “just” or “necessary” doesn’t make it less murder … whether you do in the name of Allah or in the name of the American people.

“……The degree to which you allow US authorities to terrorize people anywhere (from Baghdad to Ferguson), is exactly the degree of terrorism condone. Saying Muslims “continue to lead the world in terrorists attacks” allows you to ignore drone attacks, torture, shock and awe, detentions without trial, military invasions by the US military and threats of war like those directed towards Iran, Ignore these terroristic practices, ignore the bodies, ignore the stated policies of the US, but you cannot ignore your own participation as a cheering spectator…..”

This is just standard Greenwald regurgitation. Are you attempting to justify the attack on the French newspaper? All three suspects are French citizens. At least two were French born. An estimated 700 French citizens are fighting in Syria and/or Iraq – most to fight for the murderous ISIS – and they are potentially dangerous when they return:

“…..On May 24, 2014, a man opened fire inside the Jewish Museum in Brussels, quickly killing three people and fatally wounding a fourth before disappearing into the city’s streets. The alleged perpetrator, a French citizen named Mehdi Nemmouche, who has since been arrested and charged with murder, had spent the previous year fighting with jihadist opposition groups in Syria. His attack appeared to mark the first time that the Syrian civil war had spilled over into the European Union. Many security officials in Europe and the United States fear that this strike foreshadowed a spate of terrorist attacks that the chaos in Syria—and now Iraq—could trigger…..”

To pretend that all people think exactly like you do Wilt is just absurd – and peaceful Muslims pay the price for a few murderous, anti democratic terrorists. Protest all you want about western foreign policies. None of that justifies the targeting and murder of innocent people. Right wing parties in Europe just received a political boost because many Europeans are disenchanted with immigration policies. And I’m not justifying the murder by Brevik, McVeigh or any other right wing terrorist. They are irrelevant to the terrorism committed by Islamic terrorist in Paris yesterday.

Protest all you want about western foreign policies. None of that justifies the targeting and murder of innocent people.

Let me offer a minor correction to your statement. Perhaps it will clarify a point Mr. Greenwald often makes. Rather than explain, allow me to change a single word of your inaccurate statement (cited above) to make it an accurate statement..

Just one single word.

Ready?

Protest all you want about western foreign policies. None of that [explains] the targeting and murder of innocent people.

See the difference between “explains” and “justifies”?

“Explanation” suggests empirical accuracy in a real world.

“Justification” implies and demands a moral choice within a political/religious context.

Let’s take this one step further.

As you sermonize about the evils of terrorism and the necessity to prevent terrorism, you actually attempt to justify (rather than explain) the same criminalized speech Mr. Greenwald’s article condemns.

Thus it seems perfectly natural to you to write:

Many security officials in Europe and the United States fear that this strike foreshadowed a spate of terrorist attacks that the chaos in Syria—and now Iraq—could trigger … “

as an apparent explanation when, in fact, it’s a justification by “security officials” to use whatever tactics they choose to “protect” liberty — to protect lives or civilians or children or whatever virtue they insist sanctifies and legitimizes them in their lawlessness. (Examples of lawlessness being criminalizing speech, torturing helpless prisoners, invading a sovereign country, killing suspected terrorists with drones, or denying a fair trial to a prisoner.)

Violence, it seems to me, often occurs as a response violence.

This explanation is not a justification for violence — indeed the opposite. Less violence diminishes reactive violence.

Criminalized speech has no objective other than a political one. It deprives some (all dissidents) in order to empower those (State agents) who justify their condemnation of others as the enemy.

[Note to anyone who tried to read my previous post. I apologize. I hope this one is better formatted. It’s the same post with”blockquote” spelled accurately. I hope. No preview means no correction.]

Protest all you want about western foreign policies. None of that justifies the targeting and murder of innocent people.

Let me offer a minor correction to your statement. Perhaps it will clarify a point Mr. Greenwald often makes. Rather than explain, allow me to change a single word of your inaccurate statement (cited above) to make it an accurate statement..

Just one single word.

Ready?

Protest all you want about western foreign policies. None of that [explains] the targeting and murder of innocent people.
See the difference between “explains” and “justifies”?

“Explanation” suggests empirical accuracy in a real world.

“Justification” implies and demands a moral choice within a political/religious context.

Let’s take this one step further.

As you sermonize about the evils of terrorism and the necessity to prevent terrorism, you actually attempt to justify (rather than explain) the same criminalized speech Mr. Greenwald’s article condemns.

Thus it seems perfectly natural to you to write:

Many security officials in Europe and the United States fear that this strike foreshadowed a spate of terrorist attacks that the chaos in Syria—and now Iraq—could trigger … “

as an apparent explanation.

In fact it’s a justification by “security officials” to use whatever tactics they choose to “protect” liberty — to protect lives or civilians or children or whatever virtue they insist sanctifies and legitimizes them in their lawlessness. (Examples of lawlessness being criminalizing speech, torturing helpless prisoners, invading a sovereign country, killing suspected terrorists with drones, or denying a fair trial to a prisoner.)

Violence, it seems to me, often occurs as a response violence.

This explanation is not a justification for violence — indeed the opposite. Less violence diminishes reactive violence.

Criminalized speech has no objective other than a political one. It deprives some (all dissidents) in order to empower those (State agents) who justify their condemnation of others as the enemy.

The consequence of this strategy should be obvious.

More violence.

[Editors: Please! If you want a comments section, there are plenty of functional ones out there. This bulletin board format sucks. At the very least provide a preview. Thank you. I now repost — with some trepidation.]

This will probably be a fruitless debate. For example, your interpretation of “justifies” is different than mine. Here are some words from Bin Laden:

“…..Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs…..”

Is he “explaining” or “justifying”? Well, we already know the answer to that. So when you say “explain”, I interpret that to mean justify. When you go through the Greenwald check-list of western invasions, drone attacks, torture etc., you are essentially blaming the west for the attacks (like in Paris yesterday). Several thousand European Islamic extremists (and now terrorists) have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for the ISIS – a racist, anti-democratic, misogynistic, anti-gay and anti-minority organization which meets every definition of a terrorist organization. They murder innocent Muslims mostly (with an occasional Yazidi). These are just the European radical Islamists that have actually traveled to the Middle East to participate in the murder of innocent Muslims. Of course, there are many more back home. Still, they represent a small minority of the Muslim population. It’s ridiculous to ask every Muslim to condemn every attack by Islamic extremists in Europe or North America. None the less, there is a segment of the many Muslim communities that hates our freedoms and hates our way of life – and profiling is a result of the extremism.

“……In fact it’s a justification by “security officials” to use whatever tactics they choose to “protect” liberty — to protect lives or civilians or children or whatever virtue they insist sanctifies and legitimizes them in their lawlessness…..criminalizing speech, torturing helpless prisoners, invading a sovereign country, killing suspected terrorists with drones, or denying a fair trial to a prisoner.”

Some of those actions are lawless, but others are not. I’m not sure whether the examples mentioned by Greenwald in his article regarding “speech” are against the laws of those countries. Laws regarding free speech are different in different countries. For example, hate speech can be criminalized in Canada:

“….. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred.”[37]…..”

So you might be wrong when you use the term “lawless” for “criminalizing speech”. It is an interpretation which has been made by the Supreme Court for the US, but obviously, it doesn’t apply to other countries. This is not to say that I agree with criminalizing “denying the Holocaust” like in Europe which is ridiculous. But when Awlaki threatened the Seattle Cartoonist, that was a serious charge as we see in Paris. Salmon Rushdie faced the same possibility (still does). The problem becomes trying to predict an outcome based on speech. The French and American authorities knew that the two brothers (now surrounded north of Paris) were potentially extremely dangerous. They were on the US no fly list, but nothing was done because “suspicion” is not enough.

Finally, referring to Ferguson as an act of terrorism just shows how far apart we are on this issue. There never could be middle ground on that absurd statement.

And who are we to argue with business Insider, as we struggle through our daily lives, getting to work, visiting friends, going on holiday etc, with all these terrorists hating our freedoms. I always take my Uzi when going to buy milk late in the evening. They hate free speech so much I often have to pop off a couple of caps just to be able to place my order.

Not sure what you said Criag, but it does look as though you mean that when Muslims kill in Paris, it justifies the US government’s arrest of those engaging unfree speech in the US. Of course, since those killers were protesting free speech, perhaps you did not think through the implications of what you wrote.

I rambled a bit because I only had time to wing out something quickly – so I don’t blame you.

“…….but it does look as though you mean that when Muslims kill in Paris, it justifies the US government’s arrest of those engaging unfree speech in the US…..”

I made no statement on justification of arrest in any case. Some may have been justified (Awlaki, for example). Others may not have been – but I am not familiar in detail with any of the cases except Awlamki. I certainly DO NOT expect to hear the whole story from Greenwald. That’s a given. The article was mostly about racism directed at Muslims which is certainly true in many cases, but “profiling” is a result of violent Islamic extremism. With several thousand Muslims making the trip to Syria and Iraq to support ISIS murder, there is clearly a problem with radicalization in some Muslim communities – at least in Europe (not so much in the US). Of course, this does not apply to the vast majority of Muslims. None the less, Homeland Security and the FBI are rightly profiling. In fact the two brothers who are suspected in the murders of twelve people at the French newspaper were on the French and US radar (no fly list) which just shows how difficult it is to act on suspicions which could save lives.

When I read the headline here in the US I thought it was regarding some arrest in America. We’ve had a few of them but they’ve all been laughed out of court because I’ll say what I want and screw your feelings. Then I saw it was an article regarding England so I thought I’d drop you a note to say enjoy getting blown up over and over with your coddling of insane mullahs and their ilk. #GetBent

nice piece: topical, contextual, substantive and heavily fact-based. imho, the overall effect the topicality, contextual analysis and plethora of case material is one of potency of message: the imperialistic white man’s burden must be carried on by all Anglo-Saxons into cyberspace! Tally ho!

First of all, thank you––a thousand times. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work in Toronto but things turned out for the best. Kind of suspicious what happened up there though, wasn’t it?

This is a very touchy subject. And you’re right on constitutional grounds. It is better to be able to live in a country where you can say things that are risqué that establishment authorities do not want you to say. Social media helped me say things about the Bush administration doing 9/11 that no one else would publish.

On the issue of inciting violence, I draw a moral, if not legal line. And I’d invoke the notion of an expanded consciousness, that some of these traditional media seek to stifle, to make a point as well. If the traditional media had been more skeptical of Bush, if they had done their due diligence and actually investigated the attacks, if they had not listened to him when he intimidated them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K5M0xtxQVQ), the deaths of untold Muslim people wouldn’t have happened. If the media had reported on these facts, the Muslims outraged by the deaths would have achieved common consciousness about the use of dual and duplicitous violence against both Western and Middle Eastern people. We would have achieved solidarity in consciousness, realizing the war on terror was a tragedy but also a farce. Similarly, if people saying violent things about the police had the consciousness that they have much more in common with them than with the parts of society that are actually oppressing them, they wouldn’t be inciting violence. Of course, the rich are the ones with the means to use violence more than anyone else and often do so to stymie the rising of consciousness.

So I agree social media allow vital self-publishing, stifle tyrants and let us link with each other in profoundly important ways. These are all good things and should be kept completely legal no matter how they are used. But if they are to be used for consciousness-expanding, both people being oppressed and the establishment have a moral obligation to choose how they want to use this tool. I think we should use social media to come together instead of inciting us to pull apart. Ironically, that’s the only way we’re going to win.

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there [the ceremonial mace], and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!

Odd, that I would think of it the week that John of Orange opens Congress.

Not a big Cromwell fan. Another Killer for Christ, Cromwell replaced one violent self righteous autocracy with himself the new God-king for Jesus. The speech above, however accurate in regard to a corrupt political system , was prelude to religious “cleansing”, also known as mass murder. I personally would be fine if there were a law against advocating violence as long as it applied equally to all acts of violence including all wars of aggression. Then non-violent enforcement becomes the problem.
The American revolution is not the ideaI paridigm for social change. One can make a powerful argument that the American Revolution simply established a new violent empire marked by racism, slavery and genocide. If the society truly abhorred violence, it would create the kind of peaceful citizens who are actually fairly common in most of our experience: people that grow out of loving communities, families and ideas.
Nevertheless, considering that the press and elected politicians regularly advocate violence against whoever they currently hate or fear or wish to steal from, I fully agree with Glenn’s argument that under current law and interpretation of the Constitution, people of any political or cultural persuasion should be equally free to mire themselves in the insane advocacy of purification through violence.
But this freedom to advocate violence is not some holy principal, not some grand universal truth; it is more along the lines of monkeys gone crazy with fear and guns and dreams of never ending power. The advocacy of violence is regarded by many healthy loving people including myself as foolish and misguided, though there is a respectable tradition of self defense that I cannot fault. The best martial arts traditions emphasize the dangers of aggression and skillful use of the minimal response needed to prevent injury . The US treatment of Germany after WW2 was far better and wiser than the cruelty imposed after WW1, and the long term results are certainly better for the world. The problem with the current British repression of internet “violence” is that it is racist, nationalist and politically and culturally one-sided . Germany seems to be making a better stab at stopping hate speech and stopping the advocacy of violence in an even-handed way.
One of the sad things revealed by the internet is the combative nature of common social discourse. I fear it often brings out the worst and most mean spirited in us. Yes we need freedom to set forth honest convictions, but would it be such a loss if we learned to refrain from speech that allows no change or gives in to our violent fantasies or insults.
Glenn defends the constitution and particularly the right to free speech, but are there ideas that need to be banished from the human imagination? Can our passions move us to more peaceful ways?

Wonderful post, you have given us much to think on. You made a great point about our current political discourse being so combative. You’re not alone wishing for more civil discussions. You’re also not alone in wondering if we humans can/will turn away from violence. I sincerely hope so —- for the good of humanity and our planet.

Why don’t they just man up and say it like it is. That democracy is being systematically unhemmed and unstitched at the seams. That the consent of the governed will neither be solicited nor appreciated because the public has always been historically incapable of knowing on its own what is good for itself. And that all opinions to the contrary shall be brutally dealt with.

That the opposition to communism in yester years was the only means to gain access to the sole monoply of its practices. And that now that the rivalry is over, all need for pretenses have expired.

That the citizenry have been conditioned long enough to be at the collective psychological juncture they are at today, where they are largely in full and appreciative embrace of the loss of their own freedoms and democracy in exchange for enjoying security in a social environment whose true constructs they have yet to fully taste.

It is the slow kill with a thousand needles, one needle at a time, that is most painful…Why not just man up…There can be, and there will be, no social cost. Guaranteed.

“That the citizenry have been conditioned long enough to be at the collective psychological juncture they are at today, where they are largely in full and appreciative embrace of the loss of their own freedoms and democracy in exchange for enjoying security in a social environment whose true constructs they have yet to fully taste.”

I absolutely agree. I keep praying for people to wake up before it’s too late (if it isn’t already).

It is this kind of monitoring that speaks about what is really happening and how social control really works.

The very rich and powerful use their paid thugs to monitor and enforce viewpoints that suit them through their agents (police, military, etc.) When individuals question these agents, or the viewpoints/opinions of the very rich and powerful they are punished. Naked power exposed.

Speech is speech. Actions are actions. Let’s not forget that we have the saying, “Actions speak louder than words.” We must stand up and own our rights as a world filled with people who have personal thoughts and ideas that are valid, no matter what your thoughts and ideas are. Better government and education that holds to logic, truth and healthy living would eliminate many of the issues facing humanity today. We live with gross lies and mismanagement about our food and water supply, chemical medical establishment, and gross lies and mismanagement of our world’s resources. It’s no wonder that people are confused and pissed off.

Our national heroes shall not be criticized — be they police dutifully enforcing laws against loosies in New York or laws against jaywalking in Ferguson or helicopter gunners eliminating possible terrorists on the streets of Baghdad or hypersensitive drones eliminating possible terrorists in Yemen or Pakistan.

You are free because these heroes make you free. If you criticize them, we’ll all lose our freedoms. If we cannot torture terrorists to protect your freedoms, we will all lose our freedoms. If we cannot shoot fleeing teenagers, you will lose your freedoms. If you elect mayors who criticize police tactics, you will lose your freedoms.

Even your freedom to speak or to peaceably assemble or to defend yourself from State agents who always know best.

wiltmellow wanted a nanny. wiltmellow wanted a Big Government that always knows best. So enjoy.

… because anything Wiltmellow says must mean he’s the enemy. Right?

Tolerance, understanding, fair interpretation of his words, acceptance of different points of view — all threaten authoritarians and their ideology. that Opposition is treason.

The purpose of government — big or little — isn’t repression. It is the protection of human rights.

When the State abuses those rights — or rather when petty minded agents of the State abuse those rights — the government should be repudiated.

Repudiating the acts of government is far different from repudiating all government just as repudiating the act of Darren Wilson isn’t a repudiation of all law enforcement. In fact, quite the contrary. Standards are established by punishing those who violate those standards; it doesn’t mean all standards are bad.

Only a child would reason like that.

My guess is that if bonneville were ever in a position to enforce State policies, he/she would be every bit as petty and tyrannical as those agents who find criticism of police and military threatening.

Why else would he/she twist my words to fit his/her enemies list?

The error here isn’t government (which explicitly promises free speech) but rather intolerance for contrary opinions.

Stick with your vague aspersions and meaningless generalities (“Top heavy, resource-intensive authoritarian governments throughout history have always promised what you want.”) because specifics can be challenged. No threat there.

But really, I suspect, you try to avoid referring to both Communism and Fascist when you say, “authoritarian leftists” because you know from experience I’ll shred you when you claim communism and fascism are the same thing.

Of course you’ll ignore pre-revolutionary France, Cromwell’s England, Imperial China or a thousand other historical references that will make your childish accusations sound just as ignorant as they are.

Your ideology will protect you like a crucifix protects good Christians from evil atheists — both completely and not at all.

Walter Audisio (June 28, 1909, Alessandria – October 11, 1973, Rome) was an Italian partisan and communist politician. According to the official version, he was responsible for the death of Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator.

Here is what Mussolini looked like after Communists got their hands on him.

Look what happened to Pol Pot when the Khmer Rouge’s Ta Mok got his hands on him. Look at what happened to UNITA whenever the MPLA got their hands on them. Or when MRTA tangled with Chairman Gonzalo. Or what happened to Kim Jong Un’s uncle, when Kim got his hands on him.

Socialists are famous for internal, internecine rivalries. They’re so egotistical anyway.

You don’t get to say all cats are dogs because they both walk on four legs.

You also don’t get to say that since dogs fight with each other, that when cats and dogs fight it proves that cats must be dogs.

You don’t get to change the meaning of things simply because you want the whole world to be a certain way. Like a toddler who says “mine” to everything he touches, your foolishness isn’t a political dispute but one of understanding the meaning of words.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’?” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’?”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

“your foolishness isn’t a political dispute but one of understanding the meaning of words.” – Wiltmellow to bonneville

Taking the liberty of agreeing with your assessment of boneville’s constant claims of intransigent and ubiquitous lefty-ness throughout the land here, I’d like to add CraigSummers labelling and pigeonholing to the misidentified discourse they insist repeatedly as passing for reasoned dialogue.

I’d further like to re-use you example of Alice and Humpty’s talk to drive home the notion that it makes for an amusing analogy – to the Master goes the foils, as Humpty hopes – for in reality Alice has it right where she notes that, “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

Humpty’s fate answers boneville’s and CraigSummers’ dilemma quite nicely. Like Humpty, in the end, their arguments lay in shambles, and they have egg on their face as a result.

It’s the freaking never-ending ‘global war on terror’ ~ the craziest thing since Adam & Eve ate from the apple of knowledge in the garden of good and evil ~ that gives license to all this nonsense, imo wiltmellow.

It’s the freaking never-ending ‘global war on terror’ ~ the craziest thing since Adam & Eve ate from the apple of knowledge in the garden of good and evil ~ that gives license to all this nonsense, imo wiltmellow.

I disagree.

In concept and execution, the global war is a political strategy designed to silence opposition and to justify the use of military force against political opponents especially in the Middle East.

It is not crazy — because it’s calculated — but the global war of terror is every bit as evil (in actuality) as the evil they project upon those whom they accuse of evil-doing.

But yes, it is biblical in its scale, its brutality, and its psychology.

One does not protect a society by abandoning its principles just as one does not protect free speech by silencing (criminalizing) those who offer contrary opinions.

Idk wiltmellow … if it’s some coldly calculated master miss-strategy or the just the awful banality of evil. Yes, I’ve read the Yale brotherhood new American manifestos etc., but that doesn’t adequately explain (to me) the sheer scope and numbers of people involved the Big Evil (ie. gwot)? *I submit for peer review my scientific calculations: a.) they can’t all be in on the plot and b.) never underestimate stupid./

ps. I do know every pretext for ‘curtailment’ of civil liberty, ‘collect it all’ surveillance, wars, rumors of wars or drone killing somebody in the remotes of Pakistan is in no small way part of the global war on terror … which was declared on 9/11 by a dead man.

Idk wiltmellow … if it’s some coldly calculated master miss-strategy or the just the awful banality of evil.

Can it be both and more?

Politicians rely upon cultural truisms* to acquire political capital.

Societies “learn” through experiences which destroy or alter these cultural truisms. For instance slavery being ordained by God and necessary to sustain a certain way of life would have been a cultural truism in the antebellum South. The Civil War taught a cruel and bloody lesson (that many to this day refuse to learn.)

At some point, these politicians act upon these cultural truisms and institute policies. These policies tend to disprove the truism, but nevertheless politicians tend to continue to ride the horse that brought them to power. The application of these policies lead to actions which necessarily subvert (disprove) the original cultural truism.

In a brief and broad stroke, let me show how I think this process displays itself.

European Christianity held money lending to be an act of Greed, therefore prohibited usury. Jews, free from this cultural truism, filled a need as money lenders to kings and commoners. By creating wealth, many Jewish families became wealthy themselves. But this wealth, combined with religious agitators (politicians of a sort), created resentment among the dominant society which led to segregation, competing cultural truisms, and isolation for Jewish people.

These resentments eventually turned to scapegoating which politician Adolf Hitler exploited to gain office. His success as a politician then exacerbated prevailing attitudes so that various laws passed which — in a social spiral — created more political capital for Hitler. Originally the concentration camps were the logical consequence of political momentum. But this creates a new reality — the camps — and creates other political problems. (Thus, Theresienstadt for instance — an effort to disprove the horrible actuality.)

Eventually (especially with the war) the Wannsee Conference must take place. Decisions must be made and strategies enforced.

Enter the “banality of evil” role model Adolph Eichmann. He said during his trial (or interrogation) that it didn’t matter to him whether he was loading freight cars with cattle or people; he took pride in following orders and doing his job well.

This is the banality of evil — the ordinariness of people who hold certain cultural truisms that politicians (and members of society) exploit for their own purposes but which have horrible effects when accepted without challenge or understanding by ordinary people.

For instance, if Germany (in a plot) doesn’t send Lenin to Russia during World War I and Kerensky wins the revolution, does WW2 happen? Can Hitler exploit the gentry’s and nobility’s fear of communism and conflate it with his (and Germany’s history of) anti-semitism? Could there have been “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” and similar anti-semitic laws? Would (leaping grandly) ten million people have lost their live in Southeast Asia because of the Vietnam war?

So to answer:

First the cultural truisms, then the people who exploit these cultural truisms for political advantage, then the policies and stridency, then the strategies to implement those policies, then the horrible blood (and remorse) when ordinary people follow laws based on centuries of prejudice, years of relentless propaganda and organized by generals and bureaucrats.

The politicians who win elections with this crap, the people who vote for them, the people hand-selected to implement the policies, the policies themselves?

I’m not sure the folks @policescotland fully understand how the internet (or ‘free speech’) works? *I don’t have the time (or inclination), but I’m confident intrepid reporters @theintercept will “continue to monitor comments on social media & any offensive comments will be investigated.” After all … “whats good for the goose is good for the gander” ~ Scottish folklore

More broadly, I suspect @policescotland (and courts of jurisprudence) will have a difficult time navigating the sticky-wickits of free speech with any sense of fair play. For example, just read a review of Clint Eastwood’s new movie ‘American Sniper’ based on the memoirs by Navy Seal Chris Kyle who “reportedly described killing as “fun”, something he “loved”; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy”. “I hate the damn savages,” he wrote. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis.” He bragged about murdering looters during Hurricane Katrina, though that was never substantiated.” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/06/real-american-sniper-hate-filled-killer-why-patriots-calling-hero-chris-kyle

Clint Eastwood’s film about Navy Seal Chris Kyle has hit a raw nerve in America, with right wingers calling for the rape or death of anyone ungrateful enough to criticise his actions

It’s the difference between a fraternal and a professional company; NYPD is not the latter. New Yorkers haven’t noticed a difference in ticket writing, because NYPD has never enforced traffic or noise laws.

One example of “who’s racist” would be this asshole that your link included in the text from his twitter account. He is one of those they used, approvingly I guess, as an example of someone who “mocked” the restaurant interruptions. You need only read a handful of his tweets to see that he is only a few tweaks below those who are committing the murders in Paris today.

People who equate an organized protest against police tactics with an organized KKK lynching.

“Every 28 hours, a black person in America is killed by the police,” the protesters said. “These are our brothers and sisters. Today and every day, we honor their lives.”

Versus actual racism (from Wikipedia)

White supremacism is the racist belief, or promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds and that therefore whites should politically, economically and socially dominate non-whites. The term is also typically used to describe a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical and/or industrial dominance of whites (as evidenced by historical and contemporary sociopolitical structures like the Atlantic Slave Trade, colonization of the Global South, Jim Crow laws in the United States, and miscegenation laws in settler colonies and former settler colonies like the United States, South Africa, Australia, and Madagascar, for example).[1] Different forms of white supremacism put forth different conceptions of who is considered white, and different white supremacists identify various racial and cultural groups as their primary enemy.[2]

Throughout history, political and ecclesiastical authority has evolved, become corrupted, and eventually replaced trough revolutions and reformations. One sure sign of decay within such institutions has been its increasing intolerance to ideas coming from outside the system, and its repression of dissent. The UK, and to a lesser extent, the US, are showing the signs of this. Having given GCHQ and the NSA the authority to eavesdrop on every citizen, it was inevitable that it would come to this. Next we will see them coming in the night, like thieves, to abduct (excuse me, render) those of us who dare to hold opposing opinions.

Thanks for the article, I guess… I’m blaming you, GG, for the upcoming nightmares I’ll be having!
Seriously, great article! The hypocricy towards the end (wing-pig vs. cops death warrant) is frightening!

“[the ex-officer’s] comment was the one that came closest to a threat, so not taking action will further prove that cops are above the law.”

No that straight up is a threat. You can’t say you’re going to kill someone. That is illegal. And just like you can’t pay someone to kill someone, you also can’t do that without the payment. Same crime, lesser sentence. But the ex-cop should have gotten jail time, and he should now be a convicted felon.

Thanks for posting the link, Pedinska. Glad I’m able to help the cause.

And avelna2001 – it WAS on the front page for a bit? Well, I missed it there. I just thought, maybe Froomkin has a new post and ddecided to check. I’m sorry, but IMO, that story merits a blurb on the front page more that the stuff about Jay and that Serial podcast.

Thanks for an excellent article, Glenn. These trends should concern us all. As someone else posted, certain groups may be target now but watch out!

I also found that your article brought out to me again just how hard Freedom of Speech can be. I abhor hate speech; it is tough to have to support its right to exist, but I guess we must. Online threats do make me nervous, though. Although it can be often argued that there is no real intent to inflict imminent harm, I do often wonder if a) the person may be serious about it at a later date/time, and b) someone else might read it and make good on the threat. Same with online posts/comments which incite violence. I certainly can’t support those.

I guess I’d say it’s good to have Freedom of Speech and respect it., but I have to say I do find some of this speech concerning (yes, even if if’s state propaganda, of course). Quite a dilemma, but I guess democracy it messy.

Now I am really frightened. If we didn’t believe we were living in a clockwork orange world we are now. Everyone monitored. Everyone sanctioned and everyone afraid of saying the wrong thing or tweeting or posting the possible, offensive remark. I am astounded we have become such a world. Thank you so much Glen, positively fabulous reporting!

The UK law restricting free speech (generally referred to as Harman’s law) was initially designed to suppress discussion of mass immigration and homosexuality, and was intended to be used against the indigenous white population. You should have mentioned the RIPA legislation which the police use to monitor the communications of the press/news businesses (and bypass the press protections included in the PACE legislation). It is now difficult to communicate with with the media securely. In one of the few public parts of a secret court case, GCHQ were forced to admit that they monitor the privileged communications betwee lawyers and their clients and pass the information to government counsel. Recent legislation rushed through parliament mandates that UK web site owners provide their SSL codes to GCHQ and ISPs retain usage logs for a year and provide online access to GCHQ. I am afraid that democracy in the UK is just a mirage, the ruling class in this country have created a surveillance state the the STASI and GESTAPO could only dream of.

The NAACP action pairs up nicely with the juror who is suing McCulloch alleging mischaracterizations in the information he gave to the public following the case:

“In [the grand juror]’s view, the current information available about the grand jurors’ views is not entirely accurate — especially the implication that all grand jurors believed that there was no support for any charges,” the lawsuit says. (A grand jury’s decision does not have to be unanimous.)

“Moreover, the public characterization of the grand jurors’ view of witnesses and evidence does not accord with [Doe]’s own,” the lawsuit continued. “From [the grand juror]’s perspective, the investigation of Wilson had a stronger focus on the victim than in other cases presented to the grand jury.” Doe also believes the legal standards were conveyed in a “muddled” and “untimely” manner to the grand jury.

And in “the only democracy,” the sole female, Arab member of the Knesset is being prosecuted for her speech: “Arab lawmaker to stand trial for incitement to violence, pending hearing”

The police sought to extend the remand of suspects detained for disturbing the peace in Nazareth following the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir in Jerusalem, and clashing with police officers. According to suspicions, [Haneen] Zoabi raised her voice and called the Arab police officers traitors. Later, after a lawyer shook one of the officers’ hands, Zoabi allegedly said that no one should speak to them or shake their her voice and called the Arab police officers traitors. Later, after a lawyer shook one of the officers’ hands, Zoabi allegedly said that no one should speak to them or shake their hands, before yelling in Arabic to those in attendance to act against the Arab police officers who took action against Arab suspects.
.
Zoabi yelled “ostracism, we should spit in their faces, those who testify against our sons and daughters, those who work with the oppressor against their own people, we should clean the floor with them. Clean the floor with them. Not shake their hands, don’t let them be among us, they should fear us. When they’re in the street they should fear us. They should fear the ‘shabab’ that are arrested by the informants that they send, they are the ones who give information to the police that leads to the arrest of our sons and daughters. They stand here, the height of chutzpah. No fear, no respect, what happened? What chutzpah!.”

Maybe we should get a magazine going. Call it “Police State Today.” Cover things like “Asset Forfeiture Program” and all the ways people are being monitored.

Answer things like “Can the government secretly look into my safe deposit box or rental storage unit? Are they required to list these things with the Federal Government?” How about hotel/motel registrations? Maybe put together a surveillance fact sheet or checklist.

Do Hotels, Restaurants, etc. check you out on Facebook when you check in?

this passage, flagged by the ACLU-Massachusetts’ Kade Crockford, appeared in a CNN article yesterday about the trial of Boston Marathon bombing defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev …

The rest of this article points cases of speech being prosecuted as speech. However, Tsarnaev is different in that he is up on capital criminal charges, including murder, where the prosecution is having to show specific intent. While the speech wasn’t necessarily criminal as such, if it preceded a criminal act, then certainly the prosecution would cite it. It’s similiar to having to use statements, not just actions, to assert a charge of a hate-crime assault, conspiracy or some types of fraud where they precede and are part of the crime.

Mens rea (/?m?nz ?ri??/; Latin for “the intending mind”[1]), in criminal law, is viewed as one of the necessary elements of some crimes. The standard common law test of criminal liability is usually expressed in the Latin phrase, actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means “the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty”. Thus, in jurisdictions with due process, there must be an actus reus, or “guilty act”, accompanied by some level of mens rea to constitute the crime with which the defendant is charge …
— Wikipedia page on mens rea

Mona, thanks for your response to me in the North Korea thread – a stunningly pathetic resonse, but there it is.

Thanks for being so honest, however, for at least now I can see past you without pangs of conscience.

“In essence, I see the value of journalism as resting in a twofold mission: informing the public of accurate and vital information, and its unique ability to provide a truly adversarial check on those in power.” (Glenn Greenwald)

First, one would have to accept that writing that reveals truth has no value. I don’t think even you would agree with that. In order for change to happen, first people need to know what has been going on and they haven’t been getting that information from most of the news sources out there. If the only information out there is that which truly supports the agenda of the establishment then how would anyone actually find out about the lies being told so that they could decide whether or not change is needed?

Second, one would need to address all the attacks that have been aimed at people like Greenwald, Snowden, Assange, Wikileaks, Thomas Drake, Anonymous, etc over the time that they have all been exposing – largely in writing on the internet – information that the establishment had kept secret. Snowden is in exile, Assange is essentially a prisoner, Thomas Drake was prosecuted and had his life largely destroyed and both Anonymous and Greenwald were targets for intervention long before the Snowden documents:

If the things Greenwald writes about were so easily dismissed then why was his husband detained in Heathrow under a terrorism statute for 9 hours? Why was a laptop containing important information stolen from their house in the middle of the night? Why did the UK government feel the need to ceremoniously destroy computers at the Guardian and repeatedly threaten them for publishing information that rightly belongs to the public but which the public had been unaware of? Why have so many threats been leveled against Greenwald (and Snowden, etc) literally from the lips of people high up in that very establishment that is supposedly ignoring the things written? And what steps have been/are being taken behind the scenes that we are completely unaware of?

Third, and last, I think that one needs to be cognizant that there have been very few times in history where change has been effected by only one individual. Greenwald has never, to my knowledge, stated that what he is doing will ever result in all the changes needed by itself, i.e. that it is the onlytruly adversarial check. True change is forced by the actions of many people. It might be spearheaded by one, or a few, but only when a critical threshold of awareness and willingness to action occurs does societal change happen. How do we get there? By making people aware and convincing them that the status quo is not to their advantage. How does that happen? Well, first they need to be informed. That takes time and often a lot of adversarial discourse. Then they need to get tired of the status quo in large enough numbers to make it so. That last bit is the responsibility of all of us, not just Greenwald.

As I said above, I share your frustration, but I temper that feeling with the knowledge that no one person can be responsible for all the change that we wish for or need. No one person has ever effected to put in place all the pieces which result in lasting change. Right now there are protests all over the country – even the world – over the actions of our national police force in Ferguson and elsewhere because of African-Americans who have been unjustly killed and the lives that have been shattered by police tactics that people are finally rejecting. Has there yet been “effective change” as a result of more than six months of protests? Hard to tell. There are some cosmetic things going on, for sure, and a hella lot of pushback, which is to be expected from any powerful regime whose rule is being questioned. Should everyone stop protesting since it hasn’t been “effective” yet? How long should people keep at it before calling it quits? What is appropriate in terms of escalation should current tactics not yield acceptable results? Who decides all of that and who should they get mad at when results don’t happen on a given timeline?

These are the kinds of questions – along with exploring how willing we are ourselves to throw our bodies into the mix – that need to be answered before we start accusing others, whose lives have been demonstrably affected by the work that they’ve done, of being ineffective or, if not exactly that, then less effective than we might have wished on their behalf. I just don’t think change is an easy process to effect or evaluate and determining who should be responsible for it is a path to despondency because no one person will ever live up to all expectations. Having said all of that, I hope you stay and keep pushing. That urgency is needed everywhere because it really is too easy to slip into complacency and/or to succumb to our own personal challenges and forget that larger ones exist that impact us as well.

I appreciate the reply, but I was referring to Glenn’s work now (and for many, many months of late) being impotent and ineffectual, not to the response he got when the Snowden story first broke – indeed it was partly how much establishment ire and attention he aroused then that initially got me supporting him.

The disappointment has been that this momentous attention and elite trepidation has petered out such that now he is routinely dismissed as some kind of eccentric or novelty, and that the Intercept is proving similarly useless as a whole – even though he started it up himself.

I really doubt very much I’ll have much more (if anything) to say here.

I still think you’re overstating things / projecting here, but either way, you do realize that being a fair-weather friend is not generally considered the moral high ground? I am confused by your combination of moral outrage paired with this stance. While Greenwald sometimes pisses me off too, I think he deserves credit, as opposed to condemnation, for being willing to work for what he believes in regardless of the current climate. Investing in a project only when you think it’s going to bring you accolades, popularity, and success sounds kind of jerky, to me.

What I would do, specifically, if I had Glenn’s giftedness, and the coterie of reporters here is make sure The Intercept (from its headlines to its content) is unrelentingly full of adversarial-to-the-elite attitude, so aggressively provocative that the establishment couldn’t possibly ignore or dismiss the reporting.

I would also encourage Scahill and Poitras to do some new establishment-insulting work on a regular basis.

I would also forbid ‘gossip’ articles altogether, and all attempts to be humorous.

But hey, that’s just me.

I can’t be bothered to think of anything else. Plus I don’t have to be a musician to criticize bad music, or a filmmaker to diss crap movies.

I disagree that simply taking a more strident stance would somehow mean that people couldn’t possibly ignore or dismiss his POV. Are you inclined to listen to people who are oppositional to you in the extreme, or do you tend to label such people verbally abusive or otherwise toxic and avoid them completely if you are able to? Honestly, I don’t think decibel level of shouting has much to do with influence one way or the other – people are inclined to listen to others when they have a compelling reason to do so. In peaceful societies, that usually means popular support, which is something you must work hard at over long periods of time (I am a fan of Buddhism. I like the extreme example of Buddha, who claims to have worked patiently on trying to help others see the truth over 500 lifetimes, during one of which King Kalinga cut the flesh from his bones for his trouble.) I am not a huge fan of the one-sided “anti-establishment” thinking I sometimes see here, btw, but I think what I said above is true no matter what views and beliefs you endorse, be they left, right, center, establishment, anti-establishment, or anything else.

Glenn’s tweeting this stuff, so Ima gonna share it here. Alan Dershowitz, Esq., is being sued by two attorneys pertaining to Dersh’s allegations that they lied and should be disbarred for their allegations that he, Dersh, had sex with underage sex slaves. Make some popcorn, pull up a seat, and let the entertainment begin. Edwards & Cassell v. Dershowitz: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/2015_0106_dershowitz_defamation.pdf

A round of applause is due every commenter for speaking out on this issue. There is little doubt in my mind that any commenters who have become radicalized by support for the “Bill of Rights” are being catalogued for future processing through our “justice” system and for those who use a nom de plume to disguise their identity they must have come late to the party. We musn’t be fooled into thinking the government is only interested in fighting terrorism therefore none of us would be in their sights. For those who think I’m hiding behind my screen name the j stands for John. jgreen7801 is the screen name I’ve had since AOL. Why change it?

The thing about terrorism is that it only works if people let themselves be terrified. If writers let an occasional fatwa scare them out of criticizing Islam (let alone properly blaspheming it) then they lose – but if not, they win. Terroristic prosecutions that defy society’s established freedom of speech are no different than any other sort of terrorism – they have the moral and legal validity as an ayatollah’s fatwa. If people allow a handful of illegal assaults on their freedoms – less common than being killed by lightning or dying of a heart attack during childhood – to frighten them all away, who can they blame for that? Hard as it may be to believe, cowardice isn’t actually a virtue.

Of course, there is still good reason to fight for the rights of people who say stupid things. Censorship is a terrible and dangerous precedent that cannot be allowed to spread. Even when it fails, the fallout can be that those with bad ideas are ennobled with an aura of persecution. The result when it succeeds, of course, is much worse – those who would have disturbed us with their words instead disturb us with their actions. For example, when the leader of the World Church of the Creator was denied the right to practise law on account of his beliefs, what followed next were atrocities such as random shootings on the streets of Chicago ( http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Foxman.html ) and targeted assassination of family members ( http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/family-of-judge-targeted-by-hate-group-murdered ) Those purveying censorship, of course, will try to insist that they were trying to prevent such deaths, rather than being responsible for them; but it isn’t true. Throughout history, censorship goes hand in hand with violence, and freedom of expression with a peaceful society. What might have been directed via legal and political engagement and heated debate to become an organization as harmless, though enraging, as the Westboro Baptist Church instead led to a reign of terror.

In the case of Islam it doesn’t take much imagination to see how things can go wrong. Millions of Muslims are peaceful _almost_ to a man. The messages of violence and mayhem in their faith have literally been going on from Year 1, yet they resist. Over-the-top prosecutions/persecutions on the other hand… not so much. Stop the public debate, drive honest conversation deep underground, one on one in basements and whispers… what could possibly go wrong?

Well, that’s something, but I am specifically interested in whether or not law enforcement would have something to say about it. I’m guessing they would already have him in custody had the threatened target been law officers as opposed to someone who is protesting the actions of the police.

As the plutocrats complete their annexation of the internet, as they did with TV, newspapers, etc., expect more injection of fear to keep dissent in check and limits on free speech. As noted by members of the Trilateral Commission, there has been too much Democracy.

Indeed they are, Mona. However, it’s worth mentioning here because the gummint isn’t the only one reading social media and inflicting repercussions. Also, according to Joe Jervis (joemygod, where I first found the link):

The Archdiocese of Miami encompasses 118 parishes and missions across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Monroe counties and claims 1.3 million parishioners. It operates 73 elementary and high schools, two hospitals, two seminaries, nine health care centers, and three senior living centers. Its two colleges, St. Thomas University and Barry University, have a combined enrollment of over 13,000 students with more than 1000 faculty members and administrative staffers.

Which suggests a potential for wide repercussions just in the Dade-Miami area. Also, if the schools, medical facilities or living centers accept public funds, it could become a question of state-action content-based censorship, or possibly Title VII employment law.

I’m not sure. At issue here is whether the archdiocese can retaliate on the basis of FB posts. Maybe they can if it’s a seminarian, but if it’s, say, a senior-living resident on a Section 8 voucher there should be hell to pay.

but if it’s, say, a senior-living resident on a Section 8 voucher there should be hell to pay.

I’d agree in the case of mere recipients of a purely public good provided by a religious entity. A recipient is not in any way an agent of the entity. The entity has the right to control whether its *agents conform to its dogma.

Indeed, although if you take Caesar’s denarii, you should expect some questions about their disposition. And there is the whole question about why they enjoy a tax exemption from the Imperial Revenue Service. Walz v. New York Tax Commission (1970) was meant to advance a general societal good — charity — not entrench a sectarian privilege, especially not in public accommodations.

A teenager with a Muslim name says something broadly violent about the military and soldiers in general: arrested, prosecuted, convicted in short order.

Any number of Western men send detailed death threats, rape threats, mutilation threats to specific, individual women bloggers: oh, sweetie, ignore the trolls. There’s nothing to be done about that. Free speech you know.

This has been made possible (as in, socially acceptable) to a significant degree due to groundwork done by “progressive” movements, in particular those related to identity politics. I’m sure GG is familiar with the Brazilian case, where black and gay groups have been campaigning for a while for criminalization of offensive speech, including on social media.

. I’m sure GG is familiar with the Brazilian case, where black and gay groups have been campaigning for a while for criminalization of offensive speech, including on social media.

For the sake of a healthy regimen of civil liberties in Brazil, I hope they do not succeed. And if they do, I continue to support American standards (pre the “material support” abomination) of free speech as controlling on the Internet.

Violence rarely accomplishes anything and is most often counterproductive… even state sponsored or sanctioned violence.
While the injustices and frustrations that drive many to discuss a violent course of action may be understandable, as an actual tactic violence is usually folly.
Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan jump out as examples, but it applies to both Israelis and Palestinians… cops and looters in Ferguson.

It’s not an area of interest for me, but I would imagine that there are more NRA type Americans taking pictures of their kids with real guns than British Muslims posing their children with toy guns too.

That said, taken literally, if you actually designed wings for pigs, I still don’t think they could fly.
Sure, they’re probably smart enough to learn how to use them, but without some sort of tail assembly they would be too unstable.
Gliding… maybe.
But self-propelled flight, no.

Violence “rarely” accomplishes anything? You must not live on earth. Unfortunately violence is usually what makes things actually change. First there is a bunch of rhetoric. Then, after there are some killings, the persons of authority take it seriously. Sad but true.

Glenn notes the critical difference Twitter made in world-wide reaction to Israel’s carnage in Gaza last summer:

Perhaps the most potent example yet was the most recent Israeli attack on Gaza, where, for the first time, the full brutality and savagery of Israeli aggression was publicly conveyed. That’s because, despite their poverty, many ordinary Gazans now have video cameras on their cellphones and a Twitter account, which meant they were regularly uploading horrific video of Israeli bombs and tanks destroying hospitals, schools and apartment buildings, which in turn prevented Western journalists from ignoring or diluting the civilian carnage.

Indeed, and for this reason the Zionists are going to “have to” attempt to ensure this stops. The liberal Zionist site, The Jewish Daily Forward, wrings its hands in an article titled: “Israel Has a New Worst Enemy — Twitter: The Medium’s Immediacy and Emotion Overwhelm All Logic.” The author concludes here whining with this:

There’s no question that Israel will prevail on its on-the-ground front. As of this writing, with no cease-fire in place, the army is destroying tunnels and taking out more and more of Hamas’s rocket-launching capabilities. But on that other front — the arguably more significant one — it’s safe to say Israel has already lost. Because for all its vaunted technology and reasonable-sounding English-speaking spokesmen, there’s one thing Israel didn’t take into account: how your Twitter feed just made you feel.

Double Standard Double Standard Double Standard. What about the brave courageous warriors at West Point and the like…? Or what’s the British West Point Called?
It stinks of double Standards like most establishment nonsense.

I understand the state’s desire to curb objectionable speech. But I would urge them to show restraint. It is important to give people enough rope to hang themselves.

The problem of enforcing control over expressions of opinion on social media will be an end product consisting entirely of cheerful online conformism. Suspicion will then inevitably fall on those who don’t express their conformism with sufficient enthusiasm. Also on those who express too much enthusiasm, and thus appear to be insincere. As the boundaries of dissent become narrower, those who survive will be the experts in mendacity, or those too dim to form any opinion. On second thought, maybe the state does have a viable endgame in mind.

Rope? Now, now, Duce, if you look at the judge’s picture, you’ll see he isn’t wearing a black cloth on his wig, so hanging isn’t at issue. At least not in this case. Not yet, anyway. (Oh, and do take a look at the “establishment-loyal jurist” link in Glenn’s story. The facial expression! M’lud Judge looks like something out of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta). History really is repeating tragedy with farce.

Mikado. That’s the slovenly way in which these Acts are always drawn. However, cheer up, it’ll be all right. I’ll have it altered next session. Now, let’s see about your execution — will after luncheon suit you? Can you wait till then?

Ko-Ko, Pitti-Sing & Pooh-Bah. Oh, yes — we can wait till then!

Mikado. Then we’ll make it after luncheon.

Pooh-Bah. I don’t want any lunch.

Mikado. I’m really very sorry for you all, but it’s an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.

Perhaps it all makes some sense then, Duce, if the state’s crackdown on free speech is actually just some plain ol’ Un envy. But you seem to have forgotten that other occasional and most-feared resident within the “boundaries of dissent,” for whom simple survival’s lost meaning, the martyr. If only the state could get itself one good anti-West martyr from North Korea, why – it could almost surround Asia with wars…

Some people think media people should somehow change government policies, but all they can really do is complain like the rest of us and maybe shine a little light.

There used to be a society called MENSA for high IQ people, so I thought I’d track down a couple of them and bounce some ideas off them to see what was really going on. Apparently, they have all moved to Beta Reticula. Maybe I should move there too. I mean they still need people to sweep floors and stuff don’t they?

There is no doubt that the U.S. government has even used political speech as a significant factor in placing individuals on its “kill list” and then ending their life, including the U.S.-born preacher Anwar Awlaki (targeted with death before the attempted Christmas Day bombing over Detroit which was later used to justify Awlaki’s killing)

Your emphasis that the U.S. targeted Awlaki “before” the Xmas day bombing is not supported by your link (which itself links to a WP article that issued a correction on the particular matter). That is, the kill orders against Awlaki seem to have occurred AFTER the xmas day bombing. Awlaki was put on the CIA kill list in 2010 and it is not clear on what exact date he was put on the JSOC list but the WP article indicates it is after Dec. 24, 2009.

REGARDING THE CIA LIST

Awlaki’s dad:

In 2010, the Obama administration put Abdulrahman’s father, my son Anwar, on C.I.A. and Pentagon “kill lists” of suspected terrorists targeted for death. A drone took his life on Sept. 30, 2011.

He spoke a bit too broadly. Old WP and NYT articles say Awlaki was added to the CIA kill list in April 2010.

REGARDING THE JSOC LIST

WP Article:

The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year [2009].

Late in 2009. Does that mean after the xmas day bombing but before year end? The Washington Post suggests he was added after December 24:

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said.

“He has since been added to a shortlist” for kill/capture by JSOC. So according to these sources, Awlaki wasn’t targeted for death by JSOC as of December 24. Obviously, the xmas bombing was the next day, so your statement would only ring true if Awlaki was added the day of the xmas bombing but before it actually happened. I think that’s a serious stretch. Abdulmutallab was reported to have initially cooperated with the FBI so he may have spilled the beans on Awlaki immediately.

Regardless, I think this at least casts serious doubt on your claim, and at worst refutes it.

One great example of media obedience is the much beloved and oh so British ‘The Guardian’. Comments posted there are closely monitored in ways that would generally allow posts advocating the nuclear incineration of all Muslims but would immediately remove all post and ban for life those who would ‘too strongly’ express hostility at Israel’s apartheid or Israel’s brutal repression of Arabs. I have one account banned simply for typing the word ‘ZioNazi’ and, more recently, one of my comments was removed and my account was banned for commenting on a piece on Dershowitz because I dared ridiculed that person’s strong advocacy of torture.

Zionists are assigned to monitor the comments at the Graun and to inundate the moderators and readers editor with complaints about anything they deem “antisemitic.” It’s the UK, with their laws and sensibilities. Free speech is not a cherished value, and the Zionists take full advantage of that.

Yes,they are clamping down all over,and limiting comments.What else can they do,except create a false reality,enhanced by selective responses?I also think they boost,or somehow get concerted responses they want sometimes also,if the commenters at the Graun tend to ridicule their writers.
An age of BS.

I have noticed how comments at The Guardian do seem to be clamped down on generally. I’ve noticed a LOT more articles are not even accepting comments and wrote them about it. I did get back a response… and one thing they said is they were having a hard time getting moderators! (and didn’t someone give a link at how easy it would be to become one?)

Karl Rove understood realities: We are an empire now. Our British cousins understand what it takes to be an empire, and toleration of dissent against the wars and other atrocities congruent with empire is not high on their list. But we Americans are learning fast. I have every confidence that we can build a brave new Fascism without any heartache at all.

And what you don’t say on social media might be held against you too. The premise of this article is a little silly, but it easily transposes to what some gummint official might think one day if you’re insufficiently enthusiastic about the Great Leader on your FB page.

Or even if you choose to exercise free will and not participate at all:

Social-media silence, once viewed as admirable discretion or a sign that someone’s got too much of a real (that is, offline) life for such trivialities, now seems suspect.

I vaguely recall an article linked to somewhere about how the FBI – or some other of the alphabet compliance divisions – considering it suspicious to be a non-participant. Mark Zuckerberg and his rotten invention are a plague on us that will never go away. He should be forced to be as open about his life as all the rest of us but that’s not how this shit works.

Good thoughts and guess what – I’m not on facebook – and certainly don’t intend to be! I am considering Twitter, though.

Pedinska – you’re right on with your remark about Zuckerberg beind forced to be open about his life. Reminds me of the exchange with Todd and Lyra – and Lyra saying the spooks had to get naked, too. Got a smile out of that one!

Proper OPSEC here is to have totally normal social media profiles: Facebook for family and friends, LinkedIn for career, some harmless Twitter, and so on. It need not be overly troublesome. Everything that’s potentially problematic should be done at least pseudonymously. Compartmentalize online activity across multiple pseudonyms, and take care not to link them to each other. For Internet connectivity, compartmentalize using some mix of VPN services, JonDonym and Tor. For local storage, use full-disk encryption, and compartmentalize pseudonyms in separate machines (or at least VMs). And remember the first rule of Fight Club ;)

I do believe that the police is criminalizing more and more behavior that do not ought to get criminalized, but I do think that, in this case, the problem is that people don’t realize Facebook is a “public” platform of expression, therefore you can’t call for the death of people, just like you could not do so in a public speech, for example, at school or something similar. The problem is that Facebook is “public”, unless of course if you make sure that all your privacy settings are set correctly, and then you could argue that you were saying things in a “private” setting, and therefore can be condemn for it.

the problem is that people don’t realize Facebook is a “public” platform of expression, therefore you can’t call for the death of people, just like you could not do so in a public speech, for example, at school or something similar.

This is a complete misunderstanding of the First Amendment and actual case law surrounding it. From the link to the Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v Ohio (bolding mine):

Appellant, a Ku Klux Klan leader, was convicted under the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism statute for advocat[ing] . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform

and for voluntarily assembl[ing] with any society, group or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism.

Neither the indictment nor the trial judge’s instructions refined the statute’s definition of the crime in terms of mere advocacy not distinguished from incitement to imminent lawless action.

Held: Since the statute, by its words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action, it falls within the condemnation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, overruled.

From the Ku Klux Klan meeting that caused the prosecution and conviction which were overturned by the Supreme Court:

This is an organizers’ meeting. […] The Klan has more members in the State of Ohio than does any other organization. We’re not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it’s possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken. […]

The significant portions that could be understood were:

How far is the nigger going to — yeah.

This is what we are going to do to the niggers.

A dirty nigger.

Send the Jews back to Israel.

Let’s give them back to the dark garden.

Save America.

Let’s go back to constitutional betterment.

Bury the niggers.

We intend to do our part.

Give us our state rights.

Freedom for the whites.

Nigger will have to fight for every inch he gets from now on.

All of the above was considered protected speech. The fact that many did and still do consider it foul has no bearing on how the jurisprudence proceeded. Nor should it. From Justice Douglas’ concurring opinion:

One’s beliefs have long been thought to be sanctuaries which government could not invade. Barenblatt is one example of the ease with which that sanctuary can be violated. The lines drawn by the Court between the criminal act of being an “active” Communist and the innocent act of being a nominal or inactive Communist mark the difference only between deep and abiding belief and casual or uncertain belief. But I think that all matters of belief are beyond the reach of subpoenas or the probings of investigators. That is why the invasions of privacy made by investigating committees were notoriously unconstitutional. That is the deep-seated fault in the infamous loyalty security hearings which, since 1947, when President Truman launched them, have processed 20,000,000 men and women. Those hearings were primarily concerned with one’s thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and convictions. They were the most blatant violations of the First Amendment we have ever known.

The line between what is permissible and not subject to control and what may be made impermissible and subject to regulation is the line between ideas and overt acts.

The example usually given by those who would punish speech is the case of one who falsely shouts fire in a crowded theatre.

This is, however, a classic case where speech is brigaded with action. See Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 536-537 (DOUGLAS, J., concurring). They are indeed inseparable, and a prosecution can be launched for the overt [p457] acts actually caused. Apart from rare instances of that kind, speech is, I think, immune from prosecution. Certainly there is no constitutional line between advocacy of abstract ideas, as in Yates, and advocacy of political action, as in Scales. The quality of advocacy turns on the depth of the conviction, and government has no power to invade that sanctuary of belief and conscience. [n3]

the problem is that people don’t realize Facebook is a “public” platform of expression, therefore you can’t call for the death of people, just like you could not do so in a public speech, for example, at school or something similar.

You’re wrong. Under the law, one is permitted to do exactly this, as the Supreme Court made clear in Brandenburg, documented in the article on which you were commenting.

Also, if you can’t call for anyone’s death, does that mean that those who called for the death of Saddam Hussein, or who now call for the death of Kim-il Jong, are committing crimes?

No, but it does apply to diRosa and others in the US, and even overseas may implicate social media with a place of business in the US, e.g., FB, in some civil action arising from an overseas case. And in any event, Glenn does show how draconian the UK has gotten of late — which is a good object lesson in what can happen if you don’t have a written constitution or an explicit Bill of Rights.

Should have realized that both you and Glenn would pop in to respond to this one, and do a better job of it as well. My forte is in laboratory medicine, not law, so it’s a deep wade for me to get to the pertinent bits. ;-}

The precise Brandenburg rule is this: “Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” This case, and every one of the ones I’ve mentioned in this thread, were public platforms of one sort or another, sometimes literal platforms.

One reason is simple enough: if the custodians of public order have the power to determine what is violent advocacy, then it can apply to just about anything. What do you think of this fact pattern, all context aside? “One day I’m going to murder the bugler, one day they’re going to find him dead.”

As for “at school,” there are exceptions for content-neutral time, place and manner regulation, and in loco parentis where minors are concerned. But even that has constraints.

It is this court’s opinion that section 422 was not enacted to punish an angry adolescent’s utterances, unless they otherwise qualify as terrorist threats under that statute. Appellant’s statement was an emotional response to an accident rather than a death threat that induced sustained fear. Although what appellant did was wrong, we are hesitant to change this school confrontation between a student and a teacher to a terrorist threat. Students that misbehave should be taught a lesson, but not, as in this case, a penal one. For all the reasons stated above, the judgment is reversed.
— In Re Ricky T, 87 Cal.App.4th 1132 (2001)

Some reading on freedom of the press, implicated here as a separate line of cases, distinct from the “fighting words” issue in Brandenburg v. Ohio. You can google the case numbers and get the wording easily enough. Social or other internet media are media. There’s more, but these will do as an intro. These are still valid, binding case law.

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931). “… the continued publication by newspapers and periodicals of charges against public officers of corruption, malfeasance in office, or serious neglect of duty. Such charges, by their very nature, create a public scandal. They are scandalous and defamatory within the meaning of the statute, which has its normal operation in relation to publications dealing prominently and chiefly with the alleged derelictions of public officers.”

Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 (1938). ” … The struggle for the freedom of the press was primarily directed against the power of the licensor. … The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. … Liberty of circulating is as essential to that freedom as liberty of publishing; indeed, without the circulation, the publication would be of little value.”

Oh, and have a look at R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992) while you’re at it. Lots of interesting stuff where “fighting words” intersect with freedom of speech.

What makes the anger, fear, sense of dishonor, etc., produced by violation of this ordinance distinct from the anger, fear, sense of dishonor, etc., produced by other fighting words is nothing other than the fact that it is caused by a distinctive idea, conveyed by a distinctive message. The First Amendment cannot be evaded that easily.
— Scalia, J., majority opinion, R.A.V. v. St. Paul

No wonder why many Muslim speakers who are invited to speak on CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, etc. are so disciplined not to channel those ‘hateful views’. After all most of these people have to travel now and then and being on the wrong side of big brother can make your domestic and international travel miserable. Has anyone seen the American visa application’s section regarding crimes against humanity? If one answers those questions honestly, one will be in big trouble if big brother is accused. The reason to invite these folks then is to listen to opinions of state department in a broken English accent as a great way of guilt neutralization for these so-called news organizations.

I posted a comment earlier about the reports that organizers of the Mall of America protest are going to be charged and that they’re going to be identified by their social media posts. Here’s a follow-up story where religious leaders pleaded that these people not be prosecuted. They asked to be charged themselves. The protesters did violate the mall’s rules in holding a protest. It was a peaceful protest, however, and they are not responsible for the over-reaction of the mall authorities and the police. And I find it concerning that they plan to identify them via social media posts. And the Bloomington city attorney says outright that the point is to discourage future protests.

I was disturbed to see that legal action is being threatened against the leaders of the Mall of America protests for causing loss of revenue (!). In the news reports, it sounds like they plan to use social media posts about the protest to find the “leaders”. I think this is a very disturbing development. Perhaps it was just a threat. Clearly it is intended to chill dissent.

Going after potential terrorists merely because of “violent” social media posts is perhaps the worst way that western, so called democratic governments, could deal with actual violent terrorists. Using such terror tactics to scare away terrorists from posting on social media is just going to fuel more hatred towards the western governments ennacting these oppressive practices, and it will further justify actual violence against them. Simply put, you can’t play the terrorists game if you want to beat them, and terrorizing people from practicing their constitutionally protected right of free speech is exactly how you play the terror game. It is not only shameful as Glenn points out, but stupid.

The “beauty” of this new speech puritanism is that it knows no boundaries : last summer, a French judge found a female blogger guilty of… posting a negative restaurant review. She had to pay $ 2,000 in fines because she had advised people to stay away from said restaurant, due to an awful service (full details here : http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28331598). “Two possibilities”, Czech Master of the Absurd Kafka wrote, “making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.”

“[…] [T]hese trends in criminalizing online speech are not so much an abstract attack on free speech generally, but worse, are an attempt to suppress particular ideas and particular kinds of people from engaging in effective persuasion and political activism”, the article concludes. I.m.h.o., this conclusion is a little light, were it only because it’s leaving the definition of “effective persuasion” in the middle. As to political activism, it isn’t suppressed at all, rather invited to morph into something if not infinitely small, at least far less visible, which of course thwarts the very purpose of surveillance, and could therefore be seen as something of a paradox…

Whatsoever, these trends might indicate Sheldon Wolin’s concept of inverted totalitarianism was merely a transitory mode for capitalism : old-fashioned totalitarianism, as defined by Arendt, might be lurking around the corner again.

One particular word struck me in this article, namely ‘heresy’. It implies there is a religion, doesn’t it ? Is this religion Christianity ? Judaism ? (As opposed to Islam). Only in part, I think. Both tend to radicalize, but neither one nor the other is really threatened in the Western hemisphere. Under direct threat, on the other hand, is another monotheism, a pagan one, one that also requires absolute obedience : consumerism (a.k.a. “perfection”).

To many people, buying goods has become a luxury. To many ungrateful others, who are longing for citizenship again (as it was once understood), consumerism, its Canada-dry version, is no longer sufficient. Hence, a “religious crisis”… Since an overwhelming majority of those being in Big Brother’s line of fire are Muslims, it might, to some, be comforting to know they are the exclusive target. But if consumerism is the crisis’ real frontline, and Islam only the most clearly identifiable symptom, then Muslims are only the first on a long list…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_…

Hyperbole ? Freedom and consumerism have become antonyms. I agree with Glenn on one point here : this e-repression is not an “abstract attack on free speech in general”. It is a new battle in the very elaborate war against freedom itself…

Are the Jubair Ahmad and Emerson Begolly convictions being appealed? Or were they plea deals?

Does DiRosa have legal representation? Is the ACLU taking any sort of interest in his pending criminal prosecution for exercising his First Amendment right? I can’t imagine that stating “Put Wings on Pigs” could successfully be argued to be “incitement”.

I mean where could the law possibly draw lines on this sort of content or viewpoint specific speech? I thought this was long settled in American law? Are the following hypothetically subject to criminal summons in Massachusetts:
“Putting Lipstick On A Pig Doesn’t Make It Any Less A Pig”
“Pigs Should Die, Because Who Doesn’t LIke Dead Pigs–They Taste Good (Except Vegans/Vegetarians Of Course)”
“Anvils Attached To Pigs Dropped Into The Ocean Is A Good Start”
“I Don’t Trust Or Like American Police Or Their Practices”
“I Think Some American Police Organizations Amount to Gangs of Legalized Thugs and Racketeers Based On Their Behavior”
“American Soldiers Deserve Whatever Fate They Encounter When Occupying Another Nation’s Lands”
“Citizens Of Other Nation’s Have A Right To Defend Themselves Against Invasion By The American Military”

There is a serious line drawing problem under current Constitutional law jurisprudence here that is quite obvious.

I’m not going to be a hypocrite. I’ve argued there is a very narrow type of speech that possibly should be criminalized and/or should be subject to civil liability–and it generally already is–“incitement to imminent violence”. In other words it generally should apply only to live in person speech–person to person or person to group audience–that actively advocates, promotes or incites imminent violence to an identifiable target in physical proximity to the speaker, listener and/or group. But even then I vacillate on the subject because it is highly problematic, legally, to criminalize the content of the speaker’s speech given the line drawing problem rather than the person who acts on that speech for whatever reason, even in the context of “Hey all you fellow travelers assembled before me, the person to your left is ‘the other’ and root of your problems and needs to die-kill him immediately by smashing his head with your fists and rocks.” The liability should still rest with the person who commits the volitional act of violence against another.

To censor or criminalize internet posts or any other kind of speech (books etc.) that espouse a particularly unpopular viewpoint or actions is highly problematic in my humble legal opinion.

Otherwise, why aren’t all the advocates of killing abortion providers not being criminally sanctioned for their speech? Or Cliven Bundy?

So I think you hit the nail on the head–this is a very problematic turn in America if these sorts of laws and prosecutions are upheld. These are not “content-neutral” prosecutions of “incitement to violence” speech but “viewpoint-object specific” and/or “speaker specific prosecutions based on some characteristic of the speaker or the object of his/her ire.

That’s a very dangerous path to go down because it’s only a very very short step away from redefining what constitutes “violence”, “incitement” or “imminence” and criminalizing all dissent or positions that are skeptical or critical of any faction, individual, business entity with enough political gas to obtain legislation that insulates itself from such criticism.

As far as police public relations,ending the drug war would certainly lessen the temperature,as the harassment of people getting a buzz mimics the violence of prohibition,and ending that certainly helped in lessening public police animosity.My whole adult life has seen police as my enemy,as they want to arrest me for my lifestyle.And they tried quite a few times.knock on wood.

The paranoid policing of anti-police language is explicable in light of the murder of two officers. Yet the string of arrests and broad investigations into social media posts poses a dangerous threat to First Amendment protected speech. If it cannot be shown that the author had actual intent to threaten the safety of a person — whether a police officer or not — then speech, even violent speech, is not illegal. Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who shot dead the NYPD officers, had posted his intent to do so online, but it does not follow that violent anti-police speech per se, even when violent, constitutes a genuine threat on life.

_________________________________________________________

There is also a difference between artistic expression and intentional threat. Authorities are erring on the side of caution when it comes to social media postings in light of Brinsley’s actions, but the same caution was not deemed necessary in response to Time Warner’s release of Body Count’s “Cop Killer” shortly before the 1992 LA riots. Death-to-cops language, while regularly decried, is taken less seriously when produced under the imprimatur of a major studio or renowned artist. Musicians and performers can rely on the argument that they are not speaking as themselves when calling for dead cops. As Ice-T said of his band’s controversial track, “If you believe that I’m a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.”

Please include the ability to edit past comments as well. As the laws on acceptable speech on the internet become more stringent, it will become necessary to curate one’s past history on social media to avoid criminal sanctions.

For example, I don’t know who will win the 2016 election, but when I do, I’d like to go back and edit my comments to show I was supporting them all along.

However, be comforted, Duce, in the knowledge that history has a way of fading, and that’s before you consider Americans’ lack of historical knowledge. For instance, it’s interesting that you’re the third person in Italian history to bear the title of Duce: the second one was the poet/warmonger Gabriele d’Annunzio, and before him was the infamous Gen. Luigi Cadorna, whom you may remember — Caporetto and all that.

Has anyone here found articles that examine the impact and future consequences of the European Unions “Right to Be Forgotten” where EU courts mandated that Google remove links (in certain countries) at an individual’s request.? Thanks.

I don’t know if the EU has a right to be forgotten, but it is working very diligently towards that goal. Sometimes, even if something is not yours by right, you can still attain it by dint of hard work.

What this site needs is a suggestion box. For instance – I hear part of your tech department is going to Japan to sit around tatted up bathhouses and you don’t even have anyone doing live coverage? That’s messed up. Think of all the super important tech gossip that people are probably missing out on there. Priorities, people, priorities.

Wow, “Gatekeepers of Tolerable Opinion”. That pretty much says it all. So why do WashPo columnists, if they know they’re no longer a gatekeeper, venture onto alien websites? (No one threatened to murder them; they just got drubbed in comments section for yet another rehashing of conventional platitudes.)

I think this is sad in that it reflects a lack of faith in other people. Upon seeing someone who seems hopelessly confused to you, whatever the context of that may be, you can: 1) Assume that they are inherently confused, will always be confused, will cause others to become confused, and thus the best thing to do is to quash outbursts of such thinking 2) Assume that people are capable of change based on logic, discussion, and new information, and that if they are confused, the best thing they can do is to tell you about that through some venue, so that public discussion can center around what people are actually thinking and not what they’re pretending to think.

I understand this sentiment and usually hate ‘judging’ others, but I have to admit I’ve tried the total “I’m ok you’re ok” approach to listening to the opinion of others, and at some point you either have to embrace every batshit crazy rant that anybody anywhere has; or admit that you do think some opinions are righter than others (while respecting the underlying humanity of the person holding them, which is different than respecting the opinion). I do not generally think people are “hopelessly confused”, though, that was more a statement on how discourse in this country often seems to go (i.e., we seem to have multiple ideological groups who think other groups are hopelessly confused.)

I very much agree. Making people go underground with their views won’t change their views. The group of like-minded people will grow more slowly, because so many will think they are alone in their opinions and will be afraid to search openly for others, but the group will grow gradually, and will gain intransigence from the emotional experience of FINALLY encountering others who think alike. This is not the way to change hearts and minds. Open expression and discussion are not only morally right but also more effective.

I hate that song. Our music teacher at primary school wanted us to sing it in front of the class. I had some terrible nightmares – for nothing. She became ill for a very long time and we learned the german national anthem instead. So we also missed the bavarian anthem audition (an even more complicate melody).

Many years later I enjoyed singing mantras from India in a group surrounded by men with loud and deep voices. They said it has an healing effect on the nervous system. But I still have nightmares. Not about our family holiday in Scotland and not about me wearing a beautiful kilt as a kid. And not about nuclear wars and people burnt alive anymore. Maybe time to grow up?

Related: Some councilman in Maryland named Kirby Delauter is under the impression that it is a criminal offense to even contact him or use his name or “reference” him in an article: “So let me be clear…………do not contact me and do not use my name or reference me in an unauthorized form in the future,” Delauter, R-District 5, said in a Facebook status update

A reporter, Bethany Rogers, reported on some actions taken by Delauter. She responds to his demands and threats by explaining to him that it is laughable and absurd that he believes himself to be in a position to sue or to even make such demands.

I predict he will become a running joke, including being awarded a popular hashtag on twitter.

Knowing Councilman Kirby Delauter as we do, we weren’t surprised that he threatened The Frederick News-Post with a lawsuit because we had, he says — and we’re not making this up — been putting Kirby Delauter’s name in the paper without Kirby Delauter’s authorization. Attorneys would be called, Kirby Delauter said.

Although I sincerely agree with freedom of speech there must be limits. Remember he wasnt fined for speaking freely, he was fined for basically outraging public decency laws. In your own words you say “he was convicted “of sending a grossly offensive communication,””. Now, I dont care who is speaking but a person should at least be respectful to the families of the dead on both sides of a conflict. Nobody asked to end up dead, and the living must have the decency to be respectful of the dead and their remaining relatives

But it is already extremely obvious that in most cases only one side of some of these conflicts is getting any respect hence the reaction from the other.
I also find the notion that people who have lost a relative will spend their time reading facebook comments that they could then be offended rather hard to swallow.
Compared to the actual loss these comments should barely register even if they stumbled on them unwittingly.

You say, “But it is already extremely obvious that in most cases only one side of some of these conflicts is getting any respect hence the reaction from the other”, That is no excuse to use the kind of bad language and violent message directed toward those who serve their country and die in a battlezone. He wasnt prosecuted for speaking out, he was prosecuted for speaking out in a way which offended public decency and demonstrably so, since people complained about the offensive wording. In the UK you can walk down the street naked and no police officer can stop you, but if another member of the public complains then you must cover up or face arrest. These kinds of laws apply in a similar way to what you say in the UK

You say of the Khan case, In other words:….. you’re allowed, by our generosity, to mentally harbor your vile opinions. But if you try to publicly advocate them on Facebook, convince others to believe them, or teach them to your children, then you are a dangerous criminal who belongs in prison….. That is correct. You can have thoughts of Jihad and imagine all sorts of things but you cannot try to distribute material likely to radicalise others with that view, nor practice it yourself. In just the same way the law of the UK allows people to imagine all sorts of sexual impropriety and depraved sexual acts, yes you can even imagine having sex with a child if you like, but if you tried to encourage others to do that, or if you actually distribute material of that nature or actually commit that illegal act you are committing a serious offence

Indeed, equal enforcement is the key. I’d bet that if a policeman who urged the murder of another person, or a congressman who wanted Edward Snowden dead were prosecuted, we would see a new impetus toward respecting rights to free speech.

I cannot help but think of the recent Sony Pictures episode, and how it would have played out had the victim been a foreign studio making a comedy about assassinating Barack Obama.

The criminalization of speech is a sure sign of overwhelming cowardice on the part of those trying to forbid it. Soon enough it won’t just be applied to Muslims and those who express negative views about cops. It will, and is already starting to be, directed toward anyone who disagrees with the official state line.

Soon enough it won’t just be applied to Muslims and those who express negative views about cops. It will, and is already starting to be, directed toward anyone who disagrees with the official state line.

That has been the case since Brandenburg and before. And, like all the rest of our Constitutional protections which are being eroded and/or ignored by the government, people will pretend that the erosions mean nothing until it’s applied to themselves or a principle they hold sacred. This lack of empathy and imagination is a crippling characteristic of our society. And one for which there are very few remedies.

Well, yes, and this is why Glenn is citing Brandenburg v. Ohio. If TPTB are proscribing speech by its content, it’s going to be selective as to what viewpoint, as he points out in the article. The Brandenburg rule, to be precise, is: “Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” That is, unless it becomes an act, not advocacy. It’s also why I quoted RAV v. St. Paul elsewhere in this thread; political speech can tend toward hyperbole, exaggeration or can simply be loathsome. If what we say is going to be limited to an acceptable range of speech, somewhere between Mother Goose and Little Women, then it’s hardly free discourse.

And who gets to decide? The security forces, apparently, if Glenn’s article is a good sample.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. To justify suppression of free speech, there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil to be prevented is a serious one. Every denunciation of existing law tends in some measure to increase the probability that there will be violation of it. [n3] Condonation of a breach enhances the probability. Expressions of approval add to the probability. Propagation of the criminal state of mind by teaching syndicalism increases it. Advocacy of law-breaking heightens it still further. But even advocacy of violation, however reprehensible morally, is not a justification for denying free speech where the advocacy falls short of incitement and there is nothing to indicate that the advocacy would be immediately acted on. The wide difference between advocacy and incitement, between preparation and attempt, between assembling and conspiracy, must be borne in mind. In order to support a finding of clear and present danger, it must be shown either that immediate serious violence was to be expected or was advocated, or that the past conduct furnished reason to believe that such advocacy was then contemplated.

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom. [n4] Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution.
— Brandeis, J., dissenting, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927)

In a world where all of our communications are being collected and stored, only the Thought Police could have a real interest in patrolling the social media beat. Serious criminals stopped using easily identifiable electronic communications long ago. Or, like the large banks, they have been declared “legally” exempt from the prosecution of their crimes. We may not see these Orwellian tactics crumble soon, but crumple they will.

Note the correlation between UK’s growing stratification and the creeping enactment of the police state. This is happening all over the English speaking world today, including Australia and, of course, at home in the USA. The elites are apparently very cozy amongst themselves in the great gilded era of wealth and power inequality.

“But the persecution is by no means viewpoint-neutral. It instead is overwhelmingly directed at the country’s Muslims for expressing political opinions critical of the state’s actions.”

That’s absolutely not true. We had a guy arrested for reading out a Churchill speech critical of Islam. We have had half a dozen prosecuted for burning Korans. the entire country is gagged – a recent survey found upwards of 40% of people are fearful to speak their minds on the subjects of Islam and immigration.

Yes, we absolutely do have a terrible clamp down on free speech, but it is affecting everyone, not just Muslims.

Writing about Ahmed’s case in The Guardian, Richard Seymour described him as “the latest victim of a concerted effort to redefine racism as ‘anything that could conceivably offend white people.’”

The Guardian is on the tip of such vacant pronouncements. The Guardian has caught up with Salon.com not only in perverting the narrative, but in wanton destruction of wides swaths of comment responses that pose clean, effective resistance to their agitprop.

What the NYTs says about China(or anything)means one should think the opposite.(well at least 99%of the time.)The Guardian is now the NYTs East.Vapid sexual politics Zionist neoliberal cultural brainnumbing crap.

While I agree with the gist, this article has a few problems i.e if the first offender mentioned got only community service, how is this the “real punishment” reserved for certain speech? And I imagine that cop is now an ex-cop because of his online post?
Looks to me more like ANY speech that offends ANY person or group is now defined as “hate” and\or squashed in the West, and the trend has been\is being nurtured on college campuses, and in government, and in the media!

The following is documented in the article:“this week,a former Connecticut police officer, Doug Humphrey, used his Facebook account to issue a much more direct and disturbing threat against DiRosa, yet the ex-officer has not been charged with anything:”

So, no, he’s not an ex-cop because of his online post. As you can see he was an already retired police officer when he posted the comment. But the difference in how he is being treated due to his comments is that he has not been charged with anything and he has not been “summoned.” There is supposedly some sort of investigation coming out of the local police organization of which he was previously employed, which will almost certainly amount to nothing, and some distancing from his comments being expressed from that same police organization. How likely do you think it is that he will be charged with a crime, arrested and sentenced? And even if he had been currently employed as a police officer when he made the post, and then fired for it, how does that compare with years of prison or even hundreds of hours of community service along with the criminal conviction and record?

I agree with this assessment. I think GG is making a big effort to ignore the larger trend and focus only on the issue that he is concerned here, which is the dissent against police, state, war. But the fact is that in Europe and other places, like in Brazil, the drive against hate speech – or just plain offensive speech – is a hallmark of the identity politics movement and it is based on a solid intellectual foundation about value pluralism and similar arguments.

But the fact is that in Europe and other places, like in Brazil, the drive against hate speech – or just plain offensive speech – is a hallmark of the identity politics movement and it is based on a solid intellectual foundation about value pluralism and similar arguments.

It’s been a hallmark of the identity politics movement here in the U.S. as well, but has not been successful because of our First Amendment and attendant jurisprudence.

The British are able to openly suppress free speech since they do not have the US constitution. In our country, the government must resort to subversive means and repress free speech in secret because if they are ever caught doing it publicly the courts will stick it to them.

Exactly. And now with the NSA’s total surveillance, going after people they desire to punish is a snap. Except that they are smarter than that. They realize that freedom of speech is also the freedom to confess, and thus they know who to look at more carefully.

Hopefully we will elect someone like Rand Paul as our next president and he can expose how President Obama has had intelligence agencies violate the US Constitution in secret in much the same way that President Obama allowed the torture report to be declassified thus exposing how President Bush tortured people to death in secret.

I doubt if even Paul will expose anything, as I suspect they can get to anyone. There’s too much at stake to allow someone to come in an expose crimes of the magnitude that have been committed in the past decade.

One would think that I might have figured that out…., but thank you. (:

So, quoting JCDavis, who is absolutely correct:

“I doubt if even Paul will expose anything, as I suspect they can get to anyone. There’s too much at stake to allow someone to come in and expose crimes of the magnitude that have been committed in the past decade.”

Thanks for the notification at least. I was under the impression that all those posts where still currently legal. I guess i haven’t watched u.s. tv in 15 years… and it’s a little confusing hearing that politicians and media figures routinely suggest bombing countries seemingly pulling them out of a hat.
I remember when I was a kid you couldn’t go through an airport without hearing 2 or 3 bomb jokes (emanating from the din of fellow travelers).
So is the official rule now that it’s illegal to “refer” to violence against r1b s, or r1b majority groups or countries only? And to suggest or initiate violence towards other groups is fine so long as the government or media insinuate approval?

Greenwald uses the phrase “very white, very british”. Umm, guess again, you might want to check that(while you still somewhat can). This specific deception actually greatly contributes to the problem.

I’ll reconfirm my position of ending my support for anti-racist and human rights groups in the west; because I’m under the impression that they’re completely ignoring it and in the end the infrastructure will be stolen and used against us like everything else. As we already see with human rights orgs.

Just a quick question on mathematical feasibility, wouldn’t it be easier or more efficient to just put them in prisons than “absolutely everyone else”?

“Despite frequent national boasting of free speech protections, the U.S. has joined, and sometimes led, the trend to monitor and criminalize online political speech. The DOJ in 2011 prosecuted a 24-year-old Pakistani resident of the United States, Jubair Ahmad, on terrorism charges for uploading a 5-minute video to YouTube featuring photographs of Abu Ghraib abuses, video of American armored trucks exploding, and prayer messages about “jihad” from the leader of a designated terror group; he was convicted and sent to prison for 12 years. The same year, the DOJ indicted a 22-year-old Penn State student for, among other things, posting justifications of attacks on the U.S. to a “jihadi forum”; the speech offender, Emerson Winfield Begolly, was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison.”

Margaret Thatcher, close friend and admirer of mass murderer Augusto Pinochet, arranged for his asylum in the UK.

Thatcher to BBC: ” British people are really rather afraid of being swamped by immigrants of another culture. At least the National Front (far right, whites-only anti-immigration party) are talking about some of the problems.”

Just FYI, your interlocutor, bonneville, suffers from insane delusions, including that Adolph Hitler was a man of the left. Or that pop culture is led by nubile females created by the Illuminati as “sex kittens,” made that way via demonic mind control. He is a thorough nut — of course he loves Maggie Thatcher.

Suppression of free speech and censorship is what we are getting from our political leaders, especially Anglo governments. Another sideline of theirs is the use of the Internet for propaganda purposes, to promote their messages and attack detractors. I would love to know even the approximate number of government employees and contractors who blog and post anonymously in support of state policies, in Israel, say, or the USA , the UK or Canada.

I have posted on Twitter a number of times something along the lines of, “Is there a public interest defence for assassinating [government minster]?”, and recently someone replied, “Funny you should say that I was thinking of tweeting ‘Where’s a good assassin, when you need one?’, but thought better!”
This self-censorship due to fear is what they are trying and succeeding in doing.

I agree with you on the anti-Muslim & anti-establishment asymmetry of application of “the law”. As I said here:https://twitter.com/HarryAlffa/status/551794243363438593
“Probably jist as well I’m no Muslim – or the “anti-terror” polis wid be kickin ma door doon.”
Which for those unfamiliar with common Scots is, “Probably just as well I’m not Muslim – or the “anti-terror” police would be kicking my door down”.

This fine article describes criminalizing speech mostly directed at Muslims and resistance to military actions. There are a couple of examples of crack downs on speech about police actions.

The people who participated in the terrorist effort, so described by the FBI, of OWS, were monitored but not yet prosecuted for their posts on the web.

One can expect the use of government power against people who support black resistance to police brutality.

But where, in my view, this will become most visible is in the criminal behavior of say attempting to block a pipeline. Naomi Klein in her book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” makes the case that what is needed is a revolt against capitalism and bedrock principles like growth and progress. As these movements gain steam, the proven techniques of repression, like the ones in this article, will cast a wider net against those who attempt to slow down the rape of the earth.

I recall that on the day of 9-11, there were planned hearings on terrorism in the legislature, the most threatening kind, eco terrorism. Who knows, someone could have photographed how animals are treated before they are food.

Thanks for another great article showing how corrupt our western governments are. The cops are out of control. The surveillance state is out of control, and the rule of law is under attack by those sworn to uphold it. Nice. Everyone who is on Twitter should post something offensive to that Scottish cop tweet and clog up their shit.